


A Little Domesticity

by InterNutter



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, modern with magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2019-11-01 14:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 40
Words: 40,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17869397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterNutter/pseuds/InterNutter
Summary: A modern-with-magic AU where everyone we know somehow all live roughly on the same city block in Modern Neverwinter.The twins are kids, so are Magnus and Lucretia, and after that it gets complicated. Stories collected from my daily flash fanfictions over on Tumblr, and presented in no particular order both here, and in Still Tumbl'd, Still TAZBased on prompts from my Tumblr (internutter) where my Ask Box is always open. Even to Anons.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch asked:
> 
> Garfield pic
> 
> [AN: This pic rises from the grave again. For this one, I’m using an AU that @dualityandsuch and I have been calling Little Domestic. Modern With Magic, and something of an age swap since the twins are 5-6 when La’ming informally adopts them. Duality is working on a comic about how La’ming finds the twins. Pester Encourage her to work on it :D Loads of people we know are in the same rough area.]

 

Kids should enjoy Midsummer. The dressing up, the games, the carnivals all over the place. There was even a circus downtown that she was going to take the twins to, whether or not they managed to crack a smile. This was their first Midsummer Festival with anything approaching a decent family since they were three and a half. La’ming couldn’t figure out why they were grumpy, pouty, and otherwise out of sorts.

It could be being forced to ride in the trolley like babies. Not that La’ming could trust them to stay close and not get lost in the labyrinth of tall shelves and bargains. Her official reason was that small children had to ride in the trolley so they wouldn’t get stepped on by the larger customers. They didn’t protest, knowing that they were tiny, and were otherwise quiet.

And yet…

The more she tried to interest them in the holiday, the more pouty they got. Red-faced and ears down, their answers more clipped and brusque as their trip went on.

She even went as far as imitating that Tabaxi who was always in others’ business all the time. Not a smirk. Not a chuckle. In fact, she even glimpsed the start of some tears.

La’ming dumped her improvised costume into the trolley and took five deep breaths. “Okay,” she said. “If I tell you I have no idea what’s wrong, will one of you tell me what’s biting you?”

Koko opened his mouth, and Lulu elbowed him, commencing an agitated argument in their Twinspeak. La’ming, used to this, piloted the entire mess to a quiet spot in the hardware section and waited it out.

“Any time you’re ready. What do you want?”

Lulu spoke first, this time. “I want it to  _just_  be my birthday for a change!”

Koko nodded solemnly. “We’re sick o’ being told we can’t have cake ‘cause of all the candy we get that night.”

“We’re sick of bein’ told we can’t have two birthdays ‘cause of how Koko was born day after.”

“We’re sick of being told we’re attention hogs.”

“We’re sick of being told we’re lying for more treats.”

La’ming almost hugged them out of their trolley seats. “Oh, babies…” she sighed. “You can have your birthdays this time, but I like dressing up too much to just  _give up_  Midsummer like that. Next year? We have Lulu’s birthday and  _then_  go have some Midsummer fun. Sound like a de–” she stopped herself in time. “Sound like a good thing?”

Murmuring, this time, then two identical nods from nearly-identical siblings.

“Good. Let’s get you some birthday cakes.” She started cruising in that direction. “Lulu picks the cake for Midsummer, and Koko picks a cake for the day after. Okay?”

“Those cakes are  _huge!”_

“We’ll never eat them all…”

“They’re bigger than we–”

“–are put together!”

La’ming decided not to call them out on speaking in tandem. It could disturb a lot of people, but this time? This time they needed time to be themselves. “It’s not a good birthday unless you make yourself sick,” she said. “Candy. Included.”

While Lulu was looking over the options, Koko lifted a hand. “C’n I…?”

“Yes?”

“C’n I still wear a costume? I like the pretty rainbow dress.”

“It’s your birthdays, you can do whatever you like,” she said.

Koko leaned forwards to whisper in La’ming’s ear. “Lulu likes dresses, too, but people beat her up for it, so she doesn’t say. She doesn’t wanna say she’s a girl.”

Well. That was an interesting little revelation. Having bathed them, she thought they were both boys… evidently not. She whispered back, “Should I call you both girls or just Lulu?”

“I’m fine with being a boy,” said Koko. “Just… don’t be mean about it?”

Lulu heard and punched him. “Shut up, Koko. I can be whatever whenever.”

“Please don’t hit,” La’ming unfurled Lulu’s fist. “Talk it out, okay?”

“I’m a boy. Everyone says,” said Lulu.

“It’s who you say you are that matters,” La’ming petted Lulu’s hair. “Who do you say you are?”

Lulu returned to a sullen sulk. “Won’t.”

Fair enough. “Did you decide on a cake, at least?”

“Want the chocolate one.”

“Please,” coached La’ming.

“…please…”

She picked one out and added it carefully to the cart. “It is your birthday… you can wear anything you like, go see anything you like, or stay in if that’s your fancy. You can even be  _anyone_  you like.” She let that settle in while Koko took his time deciding between the gigantic cherry tart or the extravagant strawberry gateau.

Once  _he_  was happy with his choice, it was a slow cruise to pick out silly, flashy outfits. Koko lifted his desired rainbow dress right off the rack and pressed it against his skinny little chest. “See? I’m gonna be fabulous for my birthday  _and_  yours. So ner.”

Lulu, apparently wanting to be contrary, pointed to a fire lich costume and said, “I want  _that_  one!” And, as an afterthought, added, “Please.”

Koko had somehow snagged a ridiculously gaudy wizard hat and half his face was lost under the brim. If it wasn’t for his ears, his whole head might have gone in.

La’ming lifted it up. “I think this one is for grown-up heads, sweetie.”

“I love it anyway,” argued Koko. “Can I please have it for my birthday?” Baby doe eyes. Her only weakness.

Once again, La’ming had to wonder how these two had wound up in a cardboard box by her apartment block’s dumpster. They were just too adorable to deny too much.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GARfield the DEEEEEals warlock on Chapter 21:  
> IIIIIIIII have a requst! The lovely La'Ming spinning a sign outside of Fantasy Costco! She can even bring her kids if she wants. What a DEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAL

 

Motherhood creates a lot of changes. La'ming already knew this, of course. Becoming a non-official guardian to abandoned twins was only going over old territory in a new chain of circumstances. At least time she was better at it than when-- Less said about that the better.

Lulu and Koko were doing a lot better. They had safety, security, regular meals... The only problem was enough regular income to keep two small Elves in shoes, school books, uniforms... Her previous occupation was not something that child services or Officer Snocoun exactly smiled upon, so she was trying some honest incomes for a change. Well. More socially acceptable incomes. There was everything honest about her -ah- network job except the part about it being something she'd want the twins to ever see.

Finding babysitters for her highest-paying time windows was yet another reason why she was doing this.

Fantasy Costco loved the profits that her joking imitation of Garfield, the Deals Warlock, had wrought. Being a mascot for a shopping chain didn't exactly pay a  _lot,_ but it was a more respectable job than flashing her cleavage for paying customers on the internet. Her uniform was an orange tiger kigurumi and a star-spangled cloak meant for ages eight and under. Her work consisted of holding a gigantic cardboard arrow to help the navigationally challenged find their way on the last corner.

The twins came by in the afternoons for conversation, dancing along in their adorable little sailor suit uniforms, and runs to get her drinks because standing around in a polyester kigurumi wasn't the breeziest of occupations. Still, literally anything was better than stocking shelves.

The twins came running out of the store with a haul that had to be awkward for two such tiny kids to cart at that speed. A folding chair, a big umbrella, a gigantic frozen drink, and a fan that looked like it had a slightly magical aura.

The kids set up the chair and added the umbrella.

"Angus said it's illegal for you to work in the sun all the time," said Koko.

"You gotta have shade and half-hour breaks for every two hours," added Lulu.

"And drinks," said Koko, handing her the frozen flavoured slurry. The fan he had summoned a minor gust of wind that was like a blessing from the gods.

"It's official," she breathed. "I got me the best kids in the universe."

Twin giggles were the best giggles. They were rightfully proud of themselves for all their efforts, too. No shock, since half the stuff they brought over was bigger than they were.

She accepted the fan off of Koko and wafted some of that blessed breeze down the kigurumi, which briefly puffed out from the cooling breeze. "How am I going to do the sign stuff on my break?" she said.

Lulu appropriated the cloak, which was far too big. "We gotcha. You chill."

Koko had his sib up on his shoulders in a trice, and the two of them got to juggling the sign for her with all four arms.

La'ming would have to make sure Angus McDonald didn't let the twins get up to too many shenanigans. They were getting more sure of themselves, more confident, and fast transforming into miniature forces of nature. Almost too much to handle.

There had to be a better way. She couldn't keep imposing on the nice neighbours forever. Not Angus, not the Pithons, not miss Mak'arune downstairs... even though it was nice to have an excuse to talk to her...

There had to be a better way than what she had.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Sno destroys Sazed. Lup and Ming rejoice.

They grow up so fast. Allegedly. They say that Elves mature at the same rate as humans, but that is not quite so. Elves don’t have growth spurts, but rather slowly progress at a steady pace from infancy to something close to their adult forms.

According to their parents, they shoot up overnight. According to outside observers, they keep pace with their Human counterparts until roughly their mid-teens. That’s when the final progress of Elven growth slows down over the remaining eighty-some years until their official entrance into the adult world.

Humans used to say that it took special training to tell an underaged Elf from a grown one. That was before a lot of vitally necessary education regarding some of the more subtle indicators of an Elf’s age. All of this meant that Sazed had no business approaching Koko during his afternoon work in the local bodega.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I was documenting daily life in the urban landscape and I accidentally got you in the shot.”

“Walkway needs sweeping m’dude,” said Koko, never stopping.

“No, no. That’s not a complaint. Look.” He showed the image on his camera, which looked almost like something by a renaissance painter. With the clouds of dust and the light streaming through them and Koko, in the middle of it, looking like some diving being with the light shining in his golden hair. “You look so beautiful, here. You could be a model.”

Koko smiled in spite of himself. So far, only his moms had called him beautiful. Even his sister said he was the ugly one and they were identical. “Aw, that’s sweet of you. And a good pic. Pity I’m not paid enough to buy a print.”

“Oh, I’m not selling,” he said. “I’m Sazed Baker, and I was hoping to hire you.”

Koko brayed laughing. “For reals? Me?”

“Sure. You can start by signing this release form so I can put this picture in my art book.” Sazed offered a reasonably thick sheaf of paperwork. “This is boilerplate stuff. Permission to use and reproduce this image as an unpaid civilian, bla bla bla. Everyone has to sign it. It’s horseshit. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Uuuhh... I have to run this by my moms...”

Sazed appeared shocked. “Come on... we’re both men of the world. You don’t really need your mommy’s approval for everything do you?”

“Legally yeah. I’m like sixteen.”

“Sixteen? You? I’d never have guessed. I had guessed you were way older.”

Koko blushed. “Yeah? How old?”

Lulu appeared like a demon or an avenging angel. “Boss says stop standing around and looking pretty. Your turn in the stockroom.”

“Aw, Lulu...”

* * *

 

Lulu didn’t like the guy that Koko was already stupid in love with. Much though she’d never admit to loving her brother, he had a tendency to fall into love like the KT meteor into the Yucatan. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings about Sazed but...

There was something hinky about him.

Which was why she pulled Aunt Sno into the kitchen for some hushed and urgent girl talk while Koko continued to wax lyrical about his favourite topic - Sazed.

“You know how you’re always telling me to watch out for guys?” said Lulu. “You should have been warning Koko. This dude? Sazed? He might be like a semi-famous photographer and shit but... some of the stuff he says? Some of the stuff he does? I get hackles like anything.”

“I did try to warn Koko,” said Aunt Sno, sipping at her semi-eternal cup of coffee. “Some people just can’t be told.”

“I caught them in the stairwell last night, kissing. And it wasn’t what you’d call an innocent kiss. It’s like...” she groped for the correct reference frame. Her moms kissed like they were giving their hearts to each other. Angus and Agatha kissed like they were each others’ water in the desert. “You know those old movies where the guy kisses the girl to shut her up and you always yell about it? That. And Koko always melts like warm butter.”

“Okay, that’s a borderline thing, I can’t really--”

“His hands went inside Koko’s clothes, I swear.”

Aunt Sno nodded. “That, I can investigate. I know the right questions to ask a victim. Don’t stress, okay? I’ve been looking out for you two since your mother...” She didn’t say,  _Fell victim to a plague and left you as orphans._  That was unspoken history by now. Including the part that made Aunt Sno technically the twins’ sister.

Lulu fixed up some snackabobs that would distract Koko. They were all used to Sno’s lines of questioning and knew all her tells by now. Keeping Koko from picking up those lines was part of her job at this point. All part of protecting Koko from what felt really, really hinky and gross.

* * *

 

Koko felt like he could fly. Sazed loved him and wanted to share him with the world. Show everyone how beautiful Koko was.

It was like a game. Wear this, pose like that. He got to wear makeup and had people styling his hair and he felt like a superstar and, after a particularly good shot, Sazed would kiss him and it felt like magic.

Which was why it was such a shock when Aunt Sno burst into the studio with a whole dang task force. Some of them landed on Sazed. Some of them landed on the hair and makeup people. One of them wrapped Koko up in a big cloak and took him out of the building and into a counselling room.

That was when he felt like an idiot because they showed him what Sazed had been doing. For every artistic shot that Sazed showed Koko, there were like twenty that were...

_Gross..._

Pornographic.

They even read out and interpreted the contracts that Sazed said were ‘boilerplate’. They were gross consent forms to acquiesce to ownership. They were illegal, of course, but Sazed could have used them at a later time to make Koko think that he was property.

All of which would be evidence in court.

Koko didn’t know when his family turned up, but gods, he was glad they were there. Moms and twin sister clustered around and held him safe as he sobbed. He spent what felt like forever repeating, “I loved him...” over and over.

He’d never questioned why the artists working on him were all older men. He’d never wondered about any of the poses or the wardrobe or... anything.

“You were right,” he finally murmured to Lulu. “I’m an idiot.”

“I’m sorry I said that Koko,” she said. “You’re not an idiot just ‘cause some nasty old man had you fooled. He said things you wanted to hear. He was running a con.”

When Sazed came down, he was in handcuffs, and bruises were on his face and arms. He’d been stupid enough to try and fight his way out.

Koko had a good run-up, and kneed him square in the crotch. “YOU ASSHOLE! YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!”

“That’s assault,” said someone in the periphery.

“I didn’t see anything,” Aunt Sno glared at the speaker. “And neither did you.”

The gigantic ass had poisoned him against any kind of love in his future. He had to be careful and wary about anyone he liked from that day on. He couldn’t trust. not outside his family. Not for years.

Aunt Sno provided regular updates. He was in solitary for his own protection. His court date was incrementally delayed because they had to find a lawyer who even wanted to defend him. Someone shanked him in prison. He was no longer allowed to have cameras.

Koko could feel a little better knowing that that man would spend the rest of his life in a box without touching anyone, eating nothing but pre-packaged food because so many people wanted to kill him and poison looked like the best way to do it.

Sazed would never reach fame. His published photo journals were burned. Only a handful were kept as relics in sealed archives. So that others would learn how to spot anyone like him in the future.

Koko spent a decade dying his hair so that he wouldn’t look like the famous “Angel Sweeping” photo, which was everywhere with, or without context. Waiting for the world to forget him as he grew a shell around his heart and a cynical sting to his world view.

He would never trust anyone who started a conversation about how beautiful he was. Never again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> Can we see Sno’s awkward reunion with Ming in LD? And the twins remember her. :O

The entire Precinct called her Officer Sno. Some within it called her “The Cold Front” when they thought she couldn’t hear them and that was just fine, actually. She didn’t need those assholes getting into her life and discovering things. The only one who knew all of the truth was Avi, and he kept things to himself.

It was Avi who had found the twins again. She’d been concerned about them. Poor little tykes. They’d been dealt a bad hand. Absentee father who was so superstitious that the shrink he was visiting insisted he wasn’t ready to be an  _adult,_  let alone a decent parent. Their mother had died of a horrible infection and  _her_  sister had perished of allegedly unrelated heart problems not long after.

Following that, it was a series of terrible fostering attempts on the Starlight side of the family, and then... then they’d run away.

Considering that their last accommodations had been a plastic playhouse in the backyard, Sno didn’t blame them.  _Anything_  could have happened to them in the year between their last known residence and this latest sighting... in the same apartment building as her partner. Two floors up and across the hallway.

With another familiar name.

La’ming Ton.

Sno’s genetic mother. At least this time, she was an official adult and allegedly putting her life together. Though her finances were stable, they came to her bank account through a convoluted system of anonymised transfers that meant her income was one not entirely smiled upon by society at large. Sno had to calculate La’ming’s age.

_If I’m a hundred and forty, she’s two hundred and eleven._  Seventy-one years between mother and child. Gamgam and Peepums had always blamed La’ming’s youthful parenthood on her. They’d called it a scandal. Sno had spent eighty years believing that before she asked,  _What about the two hundred-year-old guy who fathered me?_

He had sailed through his life without any kind of consequence or expectations towards assisting in the daughter he’d made.

Enough about him.

This was about two other babies left without a family. Now in the alleged care of someone who should -according to Gamgam and Peepums- never have one. Sno had to be certain that La’ming wasn’t letting them play with rat poison or keeping them in the bathtub or something.

That was why she was here. Knocking on her mother’s door. Crisp and Severe in the Neverwinter PD uniform.

Thundering footsteps. The door swung wide open.

Two nearly-identical faces, each with mismatched eyes, stared up at her. Clean faces, good. New clothes, better. Screaming blue murder and slamming the door... nope.

The Taaco twins were the ones screaming, “IT’S A RAID! IT’S A RAID! GO! GO! GO! GO!”

What. The. Shit? Sno knocked a little more forcefully.

When La’ming opened the door, she said, “What the hell did you  _do_  to those babies?” Then she realised who she was talking to. “Nono?”

“Snocoun,” she said.

_Somewhere in the distance, one of the twins yelled, “It’s the Blue Wave! Gittouttahere!”_

“You look... You look amazing.”

“This is not a familial visit,” said Sno. “I’m here on CPS business.” The flat had fallen ominously silent. “Those twins are missing minors and it’s my duty to see to it that they’re safely housed in appropriate accommodations.” She didn’t need permission to enter while children were at risk and La’ming didn’t stop her.

The flat was tidy. Clean. Middle-of-the-road thrift furniture, some shabby chic going on. Books and toys appropriate for minors scattered around. Tolerable. The CPS would give this a grudging pass.

Sno knew for a fact that her grandparents had stopped sending private eyes after her mother when La’ming had a decent enough income to afford rent at this flat and a modicum of furniture.

All the fun of it had gone out when they could no longer let Sno find photographs of the dives in which La’ming was staying. Realising that they thrived off of La’ming’s screw ups was Sno’s first piece of detective work.

Working out that La’ming had illegally adopted these kids wasn’t even enough to work up a sweat.

“So,” Sno picked up a copy of  _The Tubby Little Puppy_  and paged through it. “Why them?”

“And not you?” said La’ming. “We both remember that phone call a month before your Seventy-first birthday. You  _know_  why not you.”

Because an Elf’s Seventies were the most chaotic, disorganised, misunderstood years of their lives. Perhaps worse than the Terrible Twenties, when the lifespan differentials really started to stick out. Seventy was when a young Elf was handled all of the expectation and none of the respect. Treated like children, expected to react like adults, given choices that could reflect on their entire lives...

_And her mother had gone into a terribly early Luume and got pregnant by a man who should have known, acted, and done better..._

“Just ‘why them’... mother.”

La’ming fussed around in the kitchen, making tea. She had fresh fruit, and honey in a jar instead of a sugar pot. Fresh vegetables in the fridge, too. “They were living in a cardboard box next to the dumpster. That asshole kid in five B had just chucked some garbage bag down and konked out Koko. Lulu was crying, she... she was acting like her world was ending. I remember that feeling. Too well.”

_The night she’s left baby Nono at her parents’ place, she’d said, was the worst night of her life. The entire two years of being underage, pregnant, and then a parent had been two years of the worst days of her life... but that day. That day topped them all. The worst of the worst._

“He,” corrected Sno. “They’re both boys.”

“Lulu says different.”

_Oh shit..._  Sno re-evaluated everything, including why certain foster homes had felt it necessary to ‘drive the devil’ out of the twins. It wasn’t just lingering superstition about heterochromia or ‘witch eyes’. It was lingering transphobia whenever Lulu tried to tell anyone who she really was.

No wonder living on the streets was preferable to being in the system.

“The good news is that that counts as extenuating circumstances,” said Sno. “I can force some paperwork through and get you registered as a sympathetic foster house inside of a month.”

“Great. Now all we have to do is talk two scared babies out of Mak’arune’s place. They’ve probably battened down all the hatches by now. What did you even  _do_  to them?”

They’s been three when their mother died, and didn’t understand that the dead body she carried them away from would never wake up. They weren’t much older when their aunt had perished, too. Time and time again, she was on duty to take them away from places where they insisted they were doing okay in. Time and time again, she took them away from family.

“It’s my bad luck to have been on duty every single time they’ve had to be taken away from a situation.”

La’ming handed over the tea. Had some herself. “Right. So they think you’re going to arrest me.”

“I wish...”

La’ming glared at her.

“...sometimes.”

“Fair enough. We’ve all been through shit. Anyway, talking them down from whatever disaster scenario they’ve leaped to. Koko’s really good at those. Scarily accurate for six.”

Six. Shit. They were twice the age they’d been when their birth mother died. Once again, perspective swirled for her. More than the dizzying realisation that she was twice the age her mother had been when... and there was still that sense of anticipating a disaster from Gamgam and Peepums.

Drinking tea gave the twins time to realise that the usual chaos of Sno’s visits wasn’t happening. Therefore Sno drank tea. In silence, because smalltalk with her mother inevitably ended up in an argument.

Then, after the tea was done and the cups were rinsed, it was downstairs to 2D, where Mak’arune made hats for Etsy and babysat the twins when La’ming was working online.

La’ming had to show the twins that she was okay, she was not being arrested, and that Officer Sno -the ‘Blue Wave’ who washed away their lives- was not going to sweep through and turn the world upside down.

The news that Officer Sno was their  _sister..._  that just about worked as enough topsy-turvy for these kids. But that was life. Awkward, complicated, and too weird to believe if it were set into fiction. Messy, too.

La’ming’s higher-paying customers were no longer paying for La’ming’s correspondence courses. That money was going to Lulu’s transition fund. The spell to change her body to match her mind and soul was not cheap, nor were the experts who would be working it.

Like it or not, La’ming Ton was working on being a better mother than she had been a literal lifetime ago. That was why Sno chose to help her out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> Can we see Merle and Ming in LD?

Every neighbourhood has a bodega, the corner shops, the convenience store. They have many names, including some brands. Seven-eleven, the IGA, quick-e-mart, shop’n’go... The names change, but the concept remains the same. A little place where anyone living there can walk and gather emergency supplies. Be it a loaf of bread, some ingredients, or the little things that one is always running short of at the last instant. They can be pokey little places with only a handful of shelves, or labyrinthine expanses with claustrophobic confines and items no-one who goes there could ever fathom needing[1].

This evening, just after ten PM, Merle was cat-napping at the counter when one of the regulars came in. One of the Elves who lived around the corner and down the street a bit. She made a beeline for the tourist spot, where clothes claiming the bearer loved Neverwinter despite any evidence to the contrary.

Long experience with this neighbourhood had ensured that this particular bodega stocked pants and skirts as well. They were one-size-fits-most atrocities that owed most of their construction to pull cords. There had been many instances in Neverwinter of the hardy perennial street loonie who managed to misplace all of their clothing before having some kind of loud and public wobbler long about three in the morning.

Merle got most of his business from the average naked creature who happened to be tripping balls. You didn’t have to be crazy to choose a pair of those pants, but it certainly helped. Therefore it was slightly odd to see the relatively sane Sea Elf grab two (size med-to-small) and two  _I (heart) NW_  shirts (small), stuffing them into her basket before scouring through areas she had never gone into before.

Merle watched through a mixture of the camera feeds and the special mirrors around the shop as she seized two stuffed toys, a misshapen unicorn and some kind of bizarre purple cow-hippo hybrid. A couple of Little Golden books, some terrible off-brand action figures. Then she stopped at some of the pre-packaged foods.

“Hey Merle... you have kids, right?”

“Technically. They’re off with their mom. I don’t get ‘em until the weekend.”

“Six-year-olds don’t need baby food, right?”

“Yeah, they all have all their teeth by then. They can chew.”

“Uhuh. So... what should I get like... two of them?”

Merle was dimly aware that she had family in distant areas. “You got some little niblings?”

“No. I found a coupl’a babies in the trash.”

Okay. Maybe it was time to hit the silent alarm. Merle decided to humour her and see if it went into dangerous turf. “Who’d throw away perfectly good babies?”

“Exactly my thoughts,” she said. “Dino-chicken nuggets should be fine, right? Are tater tots a vegetable or should I try these bubble-and-squeak thingies?”

“Never had a kid turn down the nugs,” said Merle. “As for vegetables... it’s hit or miss... most usually go for the mint peas, though. Sweet corn. If they only eat potato, go for the sweet potato. That has more vitamins.”

“I don’t think these ones are too picky.” she got a frozen vegetable medly. Handed over a hundred-dollar bill, and scooted off with her bag of supplies into the night.

Say what you like about the loonies, most of them were generous tippers.

* * *

 

Two weeks later, he got to meet them. One was clutching the binicorn plushie from that night. Both wore enormous sunglasses, and had their golden hair up in identical braids.

“Okay,” said La’ming. “You don’t like what I got? Go look for yourselves. I got a budget, so stick to the limits, okay?”

The one without the binicorn had the  _I (heart) NW_  shirt. On them, it was almost a dress. Six-year-old Elves were nauseatingly cute.

“Ah,” said Merle. “They’re real. Colour me surprised.” He watched as the twins made a bee-line for the fresh produce, each with a basket and a state of terrifying glee.

“What? You thought I slipped my gourd?” teased La’ming.

“Eh. I might’a supplied the weeds dispensary down a coupl’a block some dodgy dandelions. Accidentally planted ‘em in the Psilocybin mycelium. I got a few complaints.”

“I don’t need ‘lion.”

“Yeah every Elf says that. I don’t need Dreamroot, until my sciatica acts up or I can’t sleep or... y’know. I actually need it.”

“Long as you keep your fumes to yourself, we’re fine,” said La’ming.

“Shit yeah! Real garlic!”

“If you’re gettin’ garlic, I’m gettin’ peppers!”

La’ming journeyed into the back shelves, “Whoop. Better stop it before they have a big fight.”

These two preferred fresh ingredients. Fresher than the stuff-in-a-box she used to eat. Judging by the way the kids were plotting, they knew a lot about cookery and were teaching their adult minder.

Well. Good for them.

It wasn’t every day that people found the families that were best for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] It can’t be helped, some of these tiny little shops seem to stock gimcrack from other dimensions, like left-handed kerning sponges, or hand-cranked doormouse stuffers. They are the most common source of terribly off-model and off-brand toy merchandise. In some other reality, that’s the way it actually was.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch asked:
> 
> Avi and Sno in LD.

According to the assessment test, Avi managed to wind up on the ‘dumbass’ end of entrants and wound up with the other slow learners in the Academy - the Elves. As far as society was concerned, they were there to fill in some quotas. A few might have been. One was definitely there to prove the entire world wrong.

Her first words to him were, “That’s a violation of uniform code.”

“I never got writ up for it,” he said, taking the last seat, right by her.

“Of course not,” she said. “You’re Human.”

“What?”

Class began, and Avi soon noticed what was happening against literally everyone else in the class. Elves could get write ups for the most minor of infractions, including uniform code, whilst Avi was allowed to skate by without notice. He was always called on first, regardless of whether or not he had his hand raised… and the Elves were always wrong.

It was his first taste of injustice. It would not be his last.

It took a week of written reports, several interviews with the people in charge and, finally, an ‘anonymous’ hidden camera recording released to the media for that teacher to find himself reassigned and a more fair setting to enter the classroom.

By that time, he’d learned his future partner’s name. Snocoun Ton. She was one of the few cadets who worked herself ragged to make it to the top, earning extra points by helping him study, amongst other things.

Rumours whispered that she slept her way to the top of the class, but Avi knew that she’d never had the time. All of her extracurriculars ate every second she had to spare. Though she was valedictorian of her academy class, the higher brass had it that she was ‘on par’ with the average Human in the academy.

“It’s okay,” she said after Avi had finished ranting about the injustice of it all. “I have the time to play the long game.”

She was a hundred and twenty. A fresh-faced young adult by Elven standards. She could afford to spend his entire life working up to the higher echelons of the rank and file.

“Be proud to see you do that,” he said. “I’m in for the ride.”

“That’s career suicide, Burnsides.”

“I never wanted a career,” he said. “I just wanted to help the law be lawful without being an excuse to become a bunch of bullies.”

“That’s a lofty goal for a Humanman,” she noted.

“Aim high or shoot yourself in the foot, Ton.”

She winced. “Don’t… don’t call me that. Please.” She took a deep breath. “I’m not happy with my family name.”

“Shitty family?”

“Nailed it.”

“Okay if I call you ‘Sno’?”

A rare smile took over her usually sour face. “Sno will do. We’re going to get all of the shit. You know that, right?”

Avi grinned. “You know nothing… Ton, Sno.”

“You get away with that  _once,_  Burnsides.”

He laughed. “Worth it.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch asked:
> 
> I’m sorry I’m on an LD kick, space these out if you want fam. Also can we get Sno and Luce in LD?

Avi slowed as he passed the fire escape. It was getting dark, and it was getting chilly, and that little girl that had been up there this morning, was still up there now. Sure, she had a light to read by, but she was looking mighty cold. All huddled up with her knees inside her dress.

Sno, who had marched ahead, stopped and turned back. “What?” she said.

Avi nodded his head in the kids’ general direction. “I think something smells wrong with a situation, here.”

Their chief had them on the shittiest jobs. Enforcing CPS visits, rules, and decrees. Separating kids from the only families they knew. Sweeping kids up off the streets when they’d been thrown out of their homes… sometimes recovering sad, small bodies from culverts, dumpsters, and gutters. They got to have a second sense about things being hinky.

Sno saw it in a second, of course. “Aw shit. D-U-N?” Quasi-forensics code for Dead Upstairs Neighbour.

City life lead to some fucked up shit, sometimes. Like neighbours not knowing that a fellow neighbour had died until the foul-smelling ichor leaked into their own areas. Or children living with the deceased bodies of their parents until something forced the information out into the open.

This tiny little figure on the fire escape was small enough to not know what death looked like. Just like a certain pair of twins in her case file who had cooked for themselves for two months before… Well. That had been a nasty one.

Avi, usually the smiling, welcome face of the NWPD, walked in his patented Friendly Goof manner towards the fire escape. “Hi there, cutie…” he cooed.

She hid behind her book with barely a whimper.

“So much for the Burnsides’ famous rustic hospitality,” Sno teased. She edged around to the kids’ peripheral vision and did her best impersonation of harmlessness. It came off as somewhere between burning fuse, loaded gun, and growling dog with orange eyebrows. “Hey. My name’s Sno. What’s yours?”

She didn’t hide, but rather peeked past her book with one eye.

*

“Hey, up there,” the blue-ish police woman waved again. “Can I come up?" 

Lucretia looked down at the officers. There was the nice young man and the scary blue lady and they weren’t going away like everyone else did. She’d seen the scary blue lady around the neighbourhood, and had once seen her taking down a bad guy at the bodega. She was the good kind of scary. Lucretia nodded. 

She winced when the fire escape shook, all the same. 

"No, Burnsides. You stay down here. If we both come up, we could spook her. She gave me permission." 

The nice young man said, "Okay, but when she screams at you, I’m coming up there for mop-up." 

"Just gimmie one of those lollipops you always have and I’ll try it your way.”

Lucretia watched as the scary lady came up. Watched as she slowed down the closer she came to Lucretia’s sunny spot. Watched in silence and read the name, “Ton” on her badges. There were other words, too. Serve and Protect. 

“Pretty cold up here, isn’t it?”

Lucretia had to agree. She nodded. 

“I see you have an umbrella for rain. That’s smart. Do you have something for the cold? Or would you like my jacket?" 

Lucretia glanced inside the window into her home. She didn’t like going in there if she could help it. The smell was getting real bad. She took a risk and pointed to the jacket. It was nice and warm when scary Ton wrapped it around her. 

"Is it bad inside?” said scary Ton.

Lucretia had to nod. It was very bad inside. 

“Nobody hurts you,” it was more a statement than a question. Police were clever and saw lots of things. Scary Ton would notice things like bruises. Or little stains that weren’t washed out of Lucretia’s cleanest clothes.

Lucretia nodded again. 

“Who’s looking after you, sweetie?" 

You had to be honest with police. Lucretia pointed at herself. 

"Are your people sick?”

Lucretia thought about that one. They were sick. Mom and Dad had been very, very sick. And then they stopped coughing and throwing up and stopped breathing and started smelling bad. She shrugged. 

“Can I go see?” said Scary Ton. 

She couldn’t work out why she wanted to, but Lucretia nodded. 

Scary Ton went inside, and coughed some, too. Then she came back outside. “You’re right. It’s very bad in there. I can take you somewhere that’s better. Would you like that?" 

Lucretia nodded, and when Scary Ton came all the way out onto the fire escape, she latched onto the Police Officer’s leg and wouldn’t let go.

The nice young man down on the street thought this was so funny, but Lucretia just wanted to feel safe. Scary Ton was scarier than anything else in the whole world and would protect Lucretia from everything, she just knew it. 

Lucretia wanted ‘safe’ more than anything in the whole wide world.

“Okay, okay…” Scary Ton cooed. “I can’t take you anywhere like that. Come on… up a bit… up to my hip, huh? I need that foot for later.”

It took some wrestling, but Lucretia wound up on Scary Ton’s hip and the coat got put back on with Lucretia still inside. Scary Ton held her close and patted her hair and she was warm and smelled nice and Lucretia didn’t want to feel scared when she was like that.

*

Sno lowered down the kid’s supplies in a bag with the help of some string. Her coming down the fire escape with the kid on one hip was a complicated matter, but she was agile enough to get them both down without trouble.

“Double ten-fifty-five,” she said. 10-55. Coroner’s case.

She flinched away from Avi’s offer of touch.

“Hey, it’s okay, Lucretia…” she’d learned the name inside the apartment. A name plate on her door plus confirmation via found ID’s gave her name as Lucretia Clarke. Her own attempts at writing practically screamed that she preferred her full name, rather than Luce, Lucy, or any other derivative diminutive. “This is Avi. He’s my friend. And you know what? He’s always got lollipops.” The last sentence had been added in a conspiratorial whisper.

Avi, on cue, used some sleight of hand to produce one as if by magic. This one was yellow, like Lucretia’s pale blonde hair. “Ah? You can take it, it’s okay.”

Lucretia burrowed into the confines of Sno’s coat. “Guess she’s not a fan of candy. Or she’s not a fan of you.”

“Fine, I’ll call it in. You keep her cosy.”

Sno juggled the kid on her hip a little. Amazed at every turn how someone that small could get so heavy. There’d be no getting this kid to let go, that was a white-knuckle grip she had on Sno’s clothes. “You know… if you feel like talking, you can tell me why you like me. I’m not exactly popular with kids like you.”

Lucretia didn’t say a word, just closed her eyes so she could listen intensely to Sno’s chest.

Judging by the condition of the bodies, she hadn’t heard an adult’s heartbeat or breathing for five months.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she whispered. “I got’cha. I got’cha.” One breath to steady herself. Two. Three. And, oh fuck… she was purring for this kid.

_Now what?_


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch asked:
> 
> CHOIR CONCERT!!!!!

Schools with a choir program always went after the Elves like starving, rabid dogs after a hunk of steak. It shouldn’t have surprised La’ming Ton, new mother of two tiny, adorable, six-year-old twins that the choir program swarmed during their first day of school. Frankly, she was shocked that someone got little mister no-words Koko to string together a complete sentence.

That kid was jittery as hell around strangers at the best of times. Hell, the first time they met, he only got into her apartment because he was out cold and Lulu trusted her. The fact that she had food when he woke up gained her a minimum of trust, likewise the fact that she didn’t force them into anything.

How  _he_  had agreed to choir had to be a tale involving major intervention from the gods. Probably all of them.

Now, though, La’ming was glad.

For such little devils, they both had voices like angels. Sweet, pure voices that never missed a note. It was almost enough to sweep one away into paradise…

_Blip-blip k’chow boom “HEY DO YOU WANT TO MEET HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA? MY NAME’S TAMMY AND–”_

Several people were glaring at the kid in the next row forward, and slightly to the left of La’ming. Some were shushing him. La’ming politely tapped him on the shoulder. “Could you silence your phone, please?” she whispered. “Some people want to listen to this.”

“Some people can bite me,” he said.

Well. She  _had_  asked nicely. Now it was her turn to play  _nasty._

She focussed the spell intensely onto one person. Specifically, a much smaller bubble than the usual twenty feet. Then, blessing the fact that she took a couple of levels at Bard-dom, made a gesture behind his seat and whispered, “Pianissimo, pianissimo, pianissimo, pianissimo.”

Ha. That should shut him up for the duration. Which should be extended because of the smaller volume.

His mother had to be somewhere… but La’ming wasn’t budging until her babies had their solos. Koko’s soul-cleansing extended arpeggio… closely followed by Lulu’s irrepressible tempo change into something that made the entire audience tap their feet and burst out in applause.

Damn straight. Those were  _her_  babies. Shining like they deserved to. La’ming blew them both kisses and sidled out of her seat to have a little Word with Susan Hakniid, who was busy haranguing the talent night’s director for a slot for her idiot lump of a son,  _Jason._

Everyone knew  _Jason._  If it were possible, he would be put away for wasting carbon, air, and everyone’s time… but you couldn’t convince Susan of that. She was utterly convinced that her darling little  _Jason_  was a gift to the world and only needed one real chance to show it.

_If he’s such a gift, how can I return it?_  La’ming wondered, not for the first time. It took her three goes to get Susan’s attention.

“–and furthermore, your own school charter says that  _every_  talented student will get an opportunity to shine,  _I was talking…”_

“We noticed,” said La’ming. “All the way through  _other_  childrens’ opportunities to shine. Or is your son the only child who matters?”

Only now did Susan notice the front three rows of parents, friends, and family all glaring in her direction.

“We have sent numerous notes about your son,  _Jason,_  and his… lack of co-operative skills,” said the director, who finally had a word in edgewise. “His only talent on display tonight is that of being a disturbance. Something he’s obviously inherited.”

“You might want to have a word with him during intermission,” said La’ming. “If he thinks he can make noise during others’ performances, other kids might think they’re allowed to make noise during  _his_  performance.”

“Assuming he can spend a semester without any behaviour demerits,” said the director in a hurried addition. “Furthermore, as per the school rulebook, any further disturbance by you or your son will force us to remove you both from the premises.”

“This is a conspiracy to hold him back,” Susan hissed. “My  _lawyers_  are going to be involved.”

Thank the gods that the courts found security footage to be more admissible than Susan Hakniid ever did. Meanwhile, La’ming got to field her babies as they came off stage.

“You. Were. Amazing,” she said scooping them up into her arms and delivering a kiss each onto their darling little cheeks. She carried them towards her vacated seat and whispered, “Wanna blow the rest of the evening off for pizza and ice cream?”

Two matching grins and four matching thumbs’ up gestures. The perfect finish to a not-so-perfect night.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> Let’s see Avi’s bachelor party!!!

Sno was going to be Avi’s Second in his wedding to Johann. It was a choice that was beyond automatic. It was almost instinctual. They’d been best friends since the Academy. Of fucking course she was going to be the next best thing to the Best Man. It also, kind’a-sort’a, solved the problem of what they were going to wear to the ceremony.

It also presented a heavy problem.

As Avi’s Second, it was Sno’s duty to run the Stag Night. The Bachelor Party. The last hurrah before a life of domestic bliss. Him, her, and the boys on a pretty standard evening of drunken revelry, pranks, and possibly a stripper. Sno knew about the  _theory,_  but...

That was pretty much  _all_  she knew.

She was his partner. He loved her like a sister. But gods damn it, Sno had all the social capability of a house brick.

“Hey, pard’. I can get my  _mother_  to jump out of a cake.”

Case in point. “What?”

“Family discount. Mom jumps out of a cake, does a few dirty dances, everyone has fun and we have like, a hundred spare for more booze.” She looked up from the clipboard. “It’s win-win.”

She was genuine. Sweet Fantasy Jesus, she was genuine. “It’s. Your.  _Mother.”_

“Yes?”

“That’s fifteen levels of inappropriate.”

“Weird. ‘Cause twenty of the guys have her pinups in their lockers, and--”

Avi put his fingers in his ears and started humming. He only stopped when she stopped talking.

“It’s cool,” said Sno. “I’ve known she’s been doing this for years and she has like three ready-to-steal-’em babysitters for the twins and--”

“Your mother had twins?” Avi panicked. “You have baby sibs?”

“She found ‘em by a dumpster and is in the middle of upcycling them. Chill.”

“Wait. Stop. Someone abandoned twins by a dumpster...”

“No, they were kind’a living there themselves. You remember the Taaco case out by Tre Llew-Ddion?”

_“Those_  twins?” Oh, this was not good. Orphaned at three, shuffled between assorted asshole family members and shitty foster homes for a year. Runaways who dropped off the map at five. A chain of suspicious fires, horrible accommodations, peculiar deaths, and murders most foul. And now they resurfaced in the illegal care of an internet stripper who was also his partner’s mother. “This couldn’t get any worse if the kids were boosting cars, Sno.”

“Believe it or not, mom’s cleaned up her act since she had me in her seventies. She’s... she’s actually better care and providing more of a stable environment than anywhere official. I’ve checked.”

“Your mother. Who played Busty Juggs in  _Tug Rats.”_

“Yeah?”

“A better care provider.”

“She doesn’t do any hinky stuff when the kids are home. Gods. She’s a train wreck, not a monster.” Sno started ticking off the checklist on her fingers. “The apartment’s clean. Her studio’s always locked, the kids have proper food, good clothes, and they’re going to school. She makes sure they have good babysitters when she’s livestreaming. They’re even seeing some doctors about the malnutrition and parasites they picked up both on the street and via official channels. She’s... she’s actually being a halfway decent foster parent.”

Avi forced the conversation back on track. “And you want her to jump out of a  _cake_  for my Stag party.”

“The kids need books. They’re voracious readers.”

* * *

 

Of course a couple of the guys dressed up in SWAT gear to haul him away from his apartment. That was pretty much SOP for a City Watch Stag Nite. Instead of the come-along wagon, there was a party bus and Sno had stocked it with Redcheek cider. Avi’s favourite booze, besides the microbrews he made himself.

The party music was fairly typical. Nothing overtly offensive even though little of it was his particular jam. He could dance to it - more and more as he imbibed - and have a modicum of fun.

Then they arrived at the bar that was the actual party venue. A bar that had a stage with poles on it and a suspiciously huge cake.

_She didn’t,_  Avi begged the universe.  _Please, gods, tell me she did not..._

“Oh no,” said Sno with blatantly fake sincerity. “They delivered the wedding cake early and to the wrong address...”

Just then, half a dozen nuns entered the bar.

“Whoah, whoah, hey. This is a private party, ladies. Sisters.”

“Oh we won’t be here long,” singsonged the lead nun. “We’re gathering funds for orphaned and abandoned children. Just a five minute song and dance and we’ll be on our way.”

_Waitasecond... since when do nuns wear heels?_  Avi had just enough time to ponder that before some heavy Eighties synth started pounding out of some small but powerful speakers. Bananarama’s  _Venus_  started pounding and a well-endowed figure burst forth from the cake.

Sno’s mom did  _not_  jump out of the cake. The stripper in the cake was none other than Hornee D'Lite, a Tiefling co-star in  _Tug Rats_  and regular feature in the local brand of direct-to-disk porno.

No. Sno’s mom was the lead nun. She had managed to gather together the  _entire fucking cast_  of  _Tug Rats_  for a one-night-only live performance.

This could not have got more mortifying if Sno had been trying. That was the regrettable part. Sno had honestly been trying to make this a night to remember.

Well... she wasn’t  _wrong..._


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> And his wedding

_The pace of the bride, the pace of the groom, tell all watching the measure, how much love bein’ true_  -- Ancient Faerun saying.

Some arrangements had to be made. Johann didn’t have much in the way of family who claimed him, though he had made a plethora of friends who were far, far better. The entire ranks of the Precinct and some members of the Neverwinter City watch from outside of the Precinct were there. Sno’s family could not be stopped.

Well. The rowdy side of her family could not be stopped. Which meant that Lulu was there as a flower girl and Koko as a flower boy in a dress because why should his sister have all the fun of pretty dresses with fairy wings and flower crowns? La’ming Ton, Sno’s mother, was in amongst the ranks of Watch officers with her girlfriend. Another half-Elf by the name of Makarune.

She had been the seamstress who had seen to Johann’s outfit for today.

Avi, Sno, and all the other officers of the Watch in attendance had a much easier choice of wardrobe. Or rather, a lack of choice. Formal ceremony meant formal attire. End of discussion.

Dress blues, knee boots, dress sword, capelet, white gloves, and the plumed hat. On Sno, it looked crisp and vaguely menacing. Avi, on the other hand, couldn’t help feeling like a bit of a knob in the whole get-up.

His heart was in his mouth. This was it. This was the big day. This was where his life changed for the better for sharing it with Johann.

Soon to become Mr Johann Burnsides.

“Teeth,” said Sno.

He bared them, and she checked for anything embarrassing stuck in there. There shouldn’t be. He hadn’t been able to eat anything since he woke up and fought off the hangover thanks to the McDonald Family recipe for Gator-aid.

“Your teeth aren’t green either. Excellent,” she noted.

“Yeah, despite Andy’s best fuckin’ efforts.” They shared a laugh. “Ready as I can be.”

Sno stepped outside the door, made certain her sword was clear and clean and saluted the Chief of the Watch with it before returning it to her scabbard. Across the way, one of La’ming’s co-stars -unrecognisable in a crisp black suit- exited the opposite chamber and gave the signal.

Buglers played a fanfare. The door opened. Avi barely remembered the formalities because -oh sweet gods- Johann was resplendent in full Bard’s Motley. Deep lapis. Stark vermillion. Vibrant saffron.

The hose. The long, scalloped sleeves. The slashed pantaloons. The fucking  _codpiece._  And the brocade.  _My gods, he looks magnificent._

Johann’s magnificent curls were trained into ringlets behind his lovely pointed ears, and sailing on top like a ship in the storm was a feathered cap with a peacock’s eye in amongst all the other finery.

Avi didn’t remember what pace he set but witness statements after the fact stated unanimously that both he and Johann took off running to collide in a hug and kiss combo where they both took turns dipping each other. Much to the enthusiastic applause, cheers, and hoots of the audience.

The celebrant officiating had to remind them both to “save some of that for later.”

He took off his gloved and tucked them beside the sword. Staring at Johann and holding his hands as the celebrant went through all of the usual palaver.

He remembered sounding soppily goopy when he said, “I do,” and loving hearing it in Johann’s voice when he said the same.

Tears might have been shed. Sno would never admit to it in her lifetime.

While they were sharing the  _official_  kiss, the twins had a competition to see how many flower petals they could get in the new couples’ hair. They were extremely lucky that they were small and cute and could get away with those kinds of shenanigans.

They both had indelible smiles on their faces for the rest of the day.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> Can we see some bb!Luce reading to Sno? :3c

Every parenting book written by parents insist that quiet children were automatically getting into trouble. Every parenting book - according to Snocoun Ton, officer of the Neverwinter City Watch - was wrong. There were two states of Lucretia being quiet, and they were: asleep, or reading.

Needless to say, the school had trouble with this.

“She doesn’t talk,” complained her teacher, with the principal as backup. “Her class participation scores are terribly low.”

“She talks to people she feels safe with,” countered Sno. “She’s been through a lot for someone so young, and… if she feels more confident being quiet, perhaps you could find ways to participate that don’t include making her talk when she doesn’t want to.”

The principal, leaning against the wall, said, “I’m not entirely sure she’s  _reading…_  exactly. It looks like she’s just… flipping through the books.”

“You haven’t watched her eyes. She’s really reading them.”

Mz Tutta sighed and steepled her fingers. “For her age group, we have to hear her reading out loud for her to advance into later classes. Talking is not only necessary, but also vital for her further education.”

“That’s not fair for mute people,” noted Sno. “Nor any deaf ones.”

“She’s capable of talking,” said the principal. “Therefore, she has to talk.”

Sno did all her grumbling about ableist horseshit before she was within hearing range of the little shelter where Lucretia preferred to sit and read. She had a two-inch-thick tome from some epic sprawling fantasy, and paging through it with her normal rapidity.

She approached with just the right amount of noise. A heavy enough tread to be detected, but not heavy enough to threaten. She stopped just out of arms’ reach and dropped to a squat, waiting patiently for Lucretia to finish the section.

Little brown fingers politely added a bookmark to the places. Beautiful deep, brown eyes paid Sno cautious attention.

“Bad news, Lucretia… They’re insisting you talk. They say they have to keep you in that class until you do.”

Lucretia huffed in exasperation and sighed disappointment.

“The good news is that if you can read out loud for them, they might bump you up to an older class.”

Lucretia’s skeptical glare said that she didn’t think that was good news.

“I know. It’s all horse apples. Unfortunately, it’s all horse apples that we have to put up with. Sorry. How about… I read to you and then you can read to me, tonight. We can cuddle up in the cote and stop whenever we’re ready.”

Nod. This was a good deal.

*

Sno liked thinner books than Lucretia. She read a good section of  _Wee Free Men_  for Lucretia. She opened her tome to her bookmark and read, “Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness…”

She read very softly, but she was clearly reading. Competently. Capably. Ably.

If anyone wanted to claim that a four-year-old child had somehow memorised the entirety of  _Les Miserables,_  then Sno would have immense fun watching them trying to use this as a reason why Lucretia should stay down with her age-mates.

Sno cuddled up with Lucretia as she read, checking over the little Humanman girl’s shoulder as she read. Her purr started, of course, as she helped steady the tome in Lucretia’s tiny hands. After that began, Lucretia started smiling as she read.

When she finished with the chapter, she leaned into Sno and said, “You tickle.”

“Good tickles?” Sno worried.

Nod. She squirmed further into their embrace.

Sno automatically petted her. “Don’t ever think you’re stupid just because they say so. You’re a clever little girl, and the whole world should believe in you.”

Lucretia took a deep breath and did her best imitation of an Elven purr.

It would be a long time before she would speak freely, but when she did… she would be strong.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> Can I get some Sno protesting elfist laws?

The Xenophobia wars ended less than two hundred years ago. If you asked any random Human, they would claim the time to be closer or longer than four hundred years. They liked to pretend that the only Elves who remembered the atrocity of yesteryear were the ones who were behind the times and therefore easier to ignore.

Two hundred years after the wars came to a close, there were other evils. Segregation, separation of children from families. Sno was lucky that she’d only read about some horror-shows. Saint Vingo’s, for example, always came to the surface of that particular kettle of bad fish.

That one had given her nightmares for weeks.

The last generation of Elves had grown up more or less incapable of forging families. They had reproduced, and government ‘help’ had produced yet another generation of runaways and half-breeds flocking the ghettos and eking out existence out of whatever they could grab.

La’ming had nearly been down that deep dive. Right into the darkest gutter. She’d had a close call. A very narrow escape. Yet she still gained a majority of her income from... less than socially acceptable avenues.

The rise of dragon dens, Elven gangs, and trade in weeds had caused a lot of (Human) wowsers to generate fuss over how this sorry state of affairs could possibly have happened. They often did this whilst trumpetting about recreating horror-show reform schools that were  _exactly_  like Saint Vingo’s... which had caused the extant problem in the first place.

In an effort to pay lip service to action, the Chief of Police came up with a phenomenal stroke of pseudo-brilliance that was destined to bite people in the ass long after he’d retired. He outlawed being underage and unmarried on the streets if one was also Elven.

In an effort to reduce incidences of prostitution, and in an epic display of ignorance, one law stated that it was now illegal for Elven maidens to walk the streets of Neverwinter without the escort of a parent. Elven women had to be married in order to have the freedom to go where they whist and act under their own mental power.

It was bullshit.

As the only unmarried Elf maiden on the force, Sno felt obligated to do something. Not just for the children roaming the streets, but for any other Elf maidens everywhere who may have to deal with these asshole laws in the future.

Since the genetic donor responsible for fathering her couldn’t be assed with her existence, the only parent she had to escort her on her job in the streets of Neverwinter was none other than La’ming Ton. Her mother.

Her mother, who had had Sno at age seventy-one. Her mother, who had abandoned her to her grandparents at age seventy-two. Her mother, who had a criminal record longer than a Goliath’s arm. Her mother, who had earned her most stable income through being a cam girl. Her mother who had recently become emergency foster mother to the Taaco twins. Twins who were also gathering a long record... or at least a very thick case file.

As far as civil disobedience was concerned, this was fucking  _perfect._

Snocoun Ton, on patrol with her partner Avi -who had been briefed- with her mother in tow and, because minors couldn’t be left at home unaccompanied, the twins. All three of her immediate relatives had been told that, as a  _proper_  Elf maiden, Sno could not upbraid her mother or assist in the parenting of her adopted siblings.

Which meant that all three of them had automatic license to commit any and all minor crimes whenever Avi’s back was creatively turned.

It was only a matter of time before the Chief turned up to see what the hell was going on with them. They had been patrolling some of the better neighbourhoods, filled with the aforementioned wowsers, with La’ming wearing some of her flashier outfits and the twins... just being their adorable hyperactive little selves.

Half the golden street numbers in Elysian Heights had gone ‘mysteriously missing’ inside of the first week. The twins were most upset when they learned that they weren’t real gold. Nevertheless, polished brass still had some interesting-for-children resale value. Which was why the very same walled estate frontages were now gaining a layer of small, sticky, Elven handprints.

The chief arrived in his rolls (the hubcaps would be gone in less than a minute, the figurehead on the bonnet would vanish in another minute) and left its secure confines to talk with his most promising Elven officer.

“Ton! Sno! What the hell is all this?”

Sno had a carefully cultivated air of innocence. Nobody could ever guess it was the cleverest of forgeries. “Chief! What a pleasant surprise,” she saluted. “You’re always saying how officers of the law should follow the law, sir. As an example to all others, I’m following your most recent law, sir.”

“What sort of law makes you drag along creatures like that--” he pointed to the twins, who were using the back of his rolls as a trampoline. “--while you’re on duty?”

“No unmarried Elf maiden may go unescorted through the streets of Neverwinter,” she quoted. “Escorts must be characters of good repute and blood relatives, for example, the maiden’s parents.”

La’ming handed the Chief his wallet back. “You need to be more careful where you put this, sir. There’s light-fingered people everywhere.”

The wallet was, no doubt, lighter by a decent percentage of whatever he had in there.

“Chief, allow me to introduce my mother, La’ming Ton,” said Sno. “And these are her wards, Lulu and Koko. You remember that child abandonment case? Tre Llew-Ddion?”

The Chief’s face was an open book with large print and the current page said,  _Oh, shit..._  “The children don’t need to be here.”

“Oh, but they do, sir. My mother is their only recognised legal guardian, and therefore the only figure of custody. Leaving them in the care of unauthorised babysitters would be irresponsible, sir.”

“Daycare places. Exist.”

“Sir! Surely you remember the case file you yourself inspected before passing to me... The twins have had numerous bad experiences with official institution. Leaving them there could scar them for life, sir. They’re best in the care of someone they know who cares.”

The twins, bored of attempting to take things from the Chief’s rolls, started climbing the Chief. Sticky handprints and half-chewed sweets appeared all over his crisp uniform.

“You do have a father somewhere,” he growled.

“My father has never been involved in my life to date, sir. Asking him to get involved now would be pointless.” She faked a bright and vacant smile. “Fun fact, he’s one of the people in the council who helped you write this law.”

“But he’s...” the Chief trailed off. The math came out in his head and the full story was not something he wanted to air. Evidently, an older man could make a baby on an underaged girl and still be a gentleman of standing while the girl herself was criminalised.

“Yes,” singsonged Sno. “And not a penny paid for child support.”

The Chief got back on track. “They’re your family. Remind them of the law!”

“Why, sir... for shame. A daughter has no business correcting her own  _mother,_  sir. I’m a mere maiden. I have no authority over my younger siblings. Further, I have no legal hold over what they do.”

Lulu had reached the Chief’s shoulders and took his hat for herself. Koko, soon after, confirmed that the Chief did indeed wear a toupee.

Sno may have won a prize for keeping a straight face under those circumstances.

The Chief wheeled on La’ming. “Madam! Control your brats.”

La’ming took offense. “You mean horrible man, how dare you try to suppress my sweet little baby angels.”

Nobody could cause a scene like La’ming Ton. The twins, of course, fell to the street level, sat down, and started bawling their eyes out. Now any wowsers watching from behind their lace curtains would see the Chief as the bad guy.

That law was going to be stricken from the books in less than another week.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Can I see Sno and Avi bonding?

They promised to stay in touch, and they didn’t. Avi did remember to keep an eye out on the papers for her mention, but... there wasn’t any. There were a small amount of Elven police officers in the NWPD, and it seemed like all twelve of them were taking turns being a figure on the front page.

The closer they were to looking Human, Avi noted, the more prominent they were likely to be. Sno, with her blueish skin tone and seemingly unnaturally red hair, wasn’t going to be in the papers unless she did something spectacular.

Which was kind of horrible, when you got down to it. Sno had to be one of the most driven officers in the NWPD, and they were likely wasting it all with her being a meter maid. Something like that.

Fellow officers called him an Elf Lover, and taunted him about it. Started more than a few fights that Avi refused to finish. They also tended to abuse the fact that he knew Elvish whenever an Elf was wont to panic in their native tongue.

Then Tre Llew-Ddion happened.

A small ghetto of Elven treehouses struck with a dismal disease that wiped out most of its population. The entire place had been conceived as an ideal community for Elves so that they could be separate yet equal. There were schools and meadows and a minimum model of what the Humans thought an Elven civilisation should look like.

It was too crowded and a fungal infestation from improper irrigation was just the nail on the coffin. Hundreds of Elves died. The survivors were almost universally the criminally young. Babes in arms, toddlers, and very small children. Everyone over the age of seventy had perished.

The Neverwinter City Watch were reassigned to the case files of all those young Elves. Which was where Avi met Sno once more.

She was in full uniform. She’d all been in full uniform before, but this was full uniform with a point to prove. Every crease was knife-sharp. Everything obeyed every single letter of regulations, including the way she sat and the way she wrote. She even had her uniform hat on, something that most officers doffed within seconds of being in the office.

She also had a mountain of paperwork that she was methodically working through like anyone would work through any odious task.

She looked like she’d never smiled in her life.

He tried to lighten her up. “Hey, maybe you could adopt one or two.”

She looked up and shook her head. “Not allowed. We’re here to see to their safe rehabilitation with family or foster homes.”

Avi tried again. “Okay. Then how about a few brews after you knock off to lighten that mood?”

This time, it was a pained yet patient glare. “I’ve been racking it on this shit since day one, Burnsides. There’s no time. These kids need help.”

Wow. That was her first empathic moment since their illicit rooftop beers back at the academy. Avi took half of her inbox and took a station in a neighbouring desk. “Okay, then. So I’ll help, then.”

* * *

 

Patrons to the Starlight Hotel had complained about their things going missing. Small items that wouldn’t easily be missed. Small items that turned up at an all-night pawn shop within three blocks of the hotel. Obviously, it was an inside job.

The manager, one Fritaada Starlight, captured Sno’s attention. She asked about his family and got introduced to Leverpalt, his wife, and their four kids, Mem and Coco, the older twins, and the infant ones, Trip and Tort.

Realisation dawned when Sno said, “What about Lulu and Koko Taaco? The twins added to your care?”

“They... ran away,” Leverpalt lied. Blatantly.

Sno kept her nat twenty insight check to herself. As did Avi. They continued with their alleged investigation into the small thefts, but the instant they were alone... she buttonholed Avi. “Listen. They’re going to be watching me like dire hawks, but they’ll think you don’t give a shit. Don’t let them think otherwise and find those twins. Make sure they’re okay.”

Sno never forgot a case file. She did her utmost to check, annually, on any of the hundreds of kids she’d seen into other homes. She was especially paranoid about those who remained in the system. The Taaco twins had effectively dropped off her radar despite being in family care. She was upset and obsessed at the same time.

He found evidence that the Starlights were cashing the cheques meant to go towards the Taaco twins’ care, but there was no evidence of those twins in the Starlights’ penthouse suite. One room for the older Starlight twins. One infants’ room for the others. No hint of little Taacitos.

He found them in a basement maintenance closet that had been refitted to be their bedroom. Two cots almost too small to let them sleep comfortably. A bucket for a bathroom and only an exterior lock. No windows, little circulation and, by the looks of things, little in the way of food.

Avi called it in as a clear case of neglect and Sno carried them out of there and into the flashes of some avid press.

She finally made the papers, half-obscured by two adorable, nearly-identical faces and the NWPD blanket wrapped around them both.

* * *

 

Avi knew he was allowed to be reckless with the bike the Watch gave him, sidecar and all. So long as he drove, he could pull whatever idiot stunts he liked. And he frequently did.

Sno preferred it that way. She could - off the record - egg him on to some stunts that inevitably needed a little magical assist to survive. Featherfall came in  _very_  handy when it came to hot pursuit of a criminal.

Then came the Clarke family case. Two parents expired of the Neverwinter Summer Flu - it had been bad that year - in combination with an outbreak of the same mould that had seen to the end of Tre Llew-Ddion. They had remained where they died while their three-year-old daughter continued to eke out an existence using available cash, and then her parents’ credit card. Her name was Lucretia and she was almost terrifyingly clever.

She was also electively mute and had selected Sno as the one person in the world she felt safe with.

Avi kept his distance as they sat in the lounge and waited for someone higher up the chain to come and attempt communication. Lucretia stayed bundled up in Sno’s big, winter coat and wouldn’t come out. She communicated exclusively through a series of nods, head-shakes, and pointing.

“I don’t know what to do,” Sno whispered as Lucretia apparently slumbered on her lap. “Why the hell did she pick me?”

Avi shrugged. “Guess she likes you. Somebody has to, right?”

That earned half a smile and a snort. She’d had to grow a tough, tough shell to make it to where she was in Precinct 42. Especially since their commander kept giving her the shittiest beats he could. “Thanks.”

“So... I can fill out all the forms you’d need for emergency foster care status,” he offered.

“They’re gonna wanna know the last time I had luume’irma and who was involved,” she sighed. That was two years ago, and Avi had known about the Off Switch. “There’s all kinds of invasive questions on the Elven forms.”

He got them anyway. Yikes. Those were nasty. When was the last Luume, how regular was the cycle, precise dates of the last ten, if applicable. Who was involved in every instance. Was there sexual intercourse and did any family result...

Things that nobody needed to know. 

Sno, like her mother, had gone through early Luume in the company of her grandparents at age seventy and had since gone through... eight of them. Regular as clockwork to the day. Rough as guts, too, since they put her through the wringer for forty-eight hours of metabolic hell.

After the last one, there was a memo in her file about being allowed time off and chemical sedation for the duration. Avi only knew this much because she’d bitched about some asshole laws people were looking at that may well have criminalised luume’irma.

He spared her as many details of the form as he could. CPS could try something in eight years or less when her next Luume was due to flare up, but... perhaps things might have changed by then. He could only hope.

“What do Humanman babies like her usually eat?” Sno worried. “Are they on solids, yet? Do I still give her milk?”

Avi snorted. “She’s got teeth, she can chew.” He remembered some words he’d heard a neighbour saying as she trooped the Taaco twins towards the bodega. “Never had a kid turn down the nugs,” though when  _she’d_  said it, she was complaining. “Some kids are lactose intolerant, though. Ask her what she likes to drink when she wakes up. I think they have juice boxes down in the kiddie room. I could get a sampler. And there’s always water.”

Sno took a deep breath. “My mom wasn’t ready for me when I was born. She left me with  _her_  parents and it took me years to learn that they’re some--” she stopped herself just in time. “You’ve met them.”

“Unfortunately,” agreed Avi.

“So I’ve got that as a starter kit. I know what CPS fffff--fudging hates, what their standards are for foster care. I know the schedule they’ll expect for improvement... but I got no idea how to start on that steep slope. I need help, Burnsides...”

“Well,” he said, ticking some checkboxes. “You know what not to do thanks to your grandparents. You know the lowest bar thanks to CPS. You know redemption is possible, thanks to your mom. Considering some of the places we had to let off with a warning? I think you’ll be fine.”

Lucretia Clarke stirred and stretched in Sno’s arms, causing her purr to kick up a notch. Sno carefully arranged some flashcards on the table. People, mostly, but there were other things. One card had a toilet on it and the word ‘bathroom’. Nothing was left to chance.

The larger portion of the flashcards were in a stack, should Lucretia ever decide to interact with them.

“Hi again,” Sno cooed. “Get enough sleep?”

Nod.

“I need to know if there’s anyone we can look up,” she said. “Anyone you’d like to stay with.” The cards had ‘grandmother’, ‘grandfather’, ‘aunt’, ‘uncle’, ‘cousin’, and ‘friend’ on them.

Lucretia very delicately picked up the ‘friend’ card and tapped it meaningfully on Sno’s badge. She wedged it partially under there, just to make the meaning clear.

The look she gave Avi was clear to anyone. It said,  _Help!_  and conveyed more than a modicum of,  _I’m out of my depth, here._

Avi had been the one studying early childcare in the hopes of being a dad, one day. He and Johaan had been talking optimistically about children. “Okay,” he said. “She wants to stay with you, she gets to stay with you. I can help with the fine details, but for now... do you have any relatives with a criminal record who could harm a small child?”

“Gramgram and Peepums don’t count,” said Sno. She was smiling. That was a joke. “Mom’s been cleared of that kind of wrongdoing, and the twins are too young. So... no.”

She was going to be fine. Avi could tell. Solid determination to do better than everything she knew had to be a clear indicator that she was going to be fine.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> Anon requests Ransei

“I’ll be back late, so you two go stay at Aunty Mak’s, okay?” La’ming kissed each of the twins on their foreheads. “It’s not a school night, so you can stay up late and watch shitty television and eat shittier food if you want.”

Koko rolled his eyes and blew a raspberry.

Lulu elbowed him and said, “Gourmet pizza exists, dingus.”

“If it can have pineapple on it, it’s not gourmet,” grumbled Koko[1].

“Don’t worry about me, okay. I’m fine. It’s just a really long session at the studio.” She spared a word for Makarune. “Don’t let them cook anything extravagant, okay? They should be kids. It’s burgers and popcorn kids crave, not pate du foi gras or whatever.”

“You try to cook a decent Pappardelle  _one time…”_  grumbled Koko.

“Don’t let ‘em run through your budget,” La’ming whispered. “Common, everyday ingredients, only.”

Makarune saluted. “I honestly don’t mind having a couple of little gourmet chefs in my kitchen. Go. Do your thing. It’ll be fine.”

It wasn’t.

Most of the day went well, but all it took to ruin a good day was a slick patch on a polished floor and a bad fall.

The twins didn’t know about any of this until the next morning, when they checked their emails.

It was a simple, brief message from a ran.som@gmail.com and it said,  _Got your mom. Email back 4 deets._

The screaming happened exactly five seconds after the message sank in. The twins ran for Makarune. They ran for Angus, on the top floor. They raised fifteen colours of stink and nobody could get a word in edgewise between the two of them. Not that either of them were making much in the way of sense.

The words ‘ransom letter’ and ‘mom’ surfaced a lot, but since the twins were talking over each other the entire time, it took a few moments to unriddle.

By then, Makarune had dosed them with the special sedative apple pancakes and hot chocolate. The emergency meeting of friends of the family had to happen on the rooftop garden, since it was most of the apartment block by then.

Avi was there with Johaan, hand in hand. The Pithons were there, as were the McDonalds. Then there was Makarune desperately trying to keep the twins at least on something resembling an even keel. So far, the Pithons were assisting by wrapping the twins up in their tails, Avi was attempting to coach them through some breathing and memory exercises, Johaan was playing  _Calm Emotion,_  and the McDonalds were analysing the shit out of the email.

“What kind of kidnapper sends a CC?” wondered Agatha.

“Or uses Gmail?” pondered Angus.

“Whaddathey want from us?” Koko snivelled. He had his hands wrapped around a big mug that almost dripped marshmallows and cream. “We’re kids. We don’t got shit…”

Lulu wiped her face. “I been savin’ up my pocket money, an’… I got… almos’ twenny dollars?”

Agatha elbowed Angus, pointing to something on the screen. Angus peered at it, lifting his glasses up. He said, “Oh, shit.”

Koko started out-and-out bawling again. “It’s the curse! It’s the cur-hur-hurse… I hurt our mo-o-o-om…”

Lulu wrapped herself around him. “We’re  _not_  bad luck, doofus. Our stupid father didn’t know anything about anything. We’re not cursed.”

“Indeed you’re not,” said Angus. “This isn’t a ransom email. It’s an email from someone who’s name concatenates into ‘ransom’. Specifically, ran dot som.”

“I think it might be from one of your mom’s… co-workers. Ransei Somner.” Also known as Hornee D’Lite to a select crowd. “I’ve emailed her back. Your mom took a tumble and broke her arm. She’s in recovery and I have the ward details.

Koko gulped down the hot chocolate. Lulu did the same. Together, they said, “Is she okay?”

* * *

 

La’ming surfaced from a cloud of dandelion extract. Her left arm really hurt. “Ma’am… There’s a large crowd of people here to see you. They say they’re your family.”

She looked over to Ransei. The large, thickset tiefling said, “I only emailed your kids,” and shrugged.

“Wanna see m’ babies,” La’ming slurred, deep in the valley of the dandelions. “They’ll be worried about me…”

The nurse pulled aside the curtain enough so that La’ming could see the entire fucking crowd of worried residents from her apartment block.

“Heeeeyyyy,” she crooned. “Th’ gang’s all here… Where’s my babies?”

Twin golden streaks shrieked, “Mom!” and then she was covered in family. Not so skinny, any more, but still so small and so light and very, very wet.

“Din’ wanna make y’ cry, m’ poor babies…” It was very important to kiss them. She couldn’t kiss them enough. “It’s okay… they got me onna good stuff.”

“Ease up,” said Ransei. “Careful of her left arm.”

“Is this your family, ma’am?”

La’ming squinted at the mob. “Yeah, they is m’ fam’ly. We all ‘dopted eachother…”

Ransei introduced herself to the family as a ‘co-worker’. She had had the foresight to get into some street-passable clothes before climbing into the ambulance with La’ming.

Those who recognised her as Hornee D’Lite kept that knowledge to themselves.

She was a thickset, russet-coloured tiefling with an enormous set of horns. Everything about her was thick.

“You didn’t tell me your babies were this cute,” she cooed. “Hey, there li’l darlin’s. I work with your momma. Can I cuddle you?”

Lulu looked to La’ming, who slurred, “Rans issa ver’ gen’l frien’…”

She was also, the twins discovered, soft and warm and the kind of comfort they needed at that exact moment.

The assembled crowd of well-wishers decided to wait until La’ming was sober before telling her about the upset, that morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Opinions expressed by characters are not necessarily that of the author.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch asked:
> 
> Sno + beau? (+Avi?)

Avi didn’t worry about waking up in Sno’s apartment. She usually dragged him to her spare bedroom when he’d overdone it the night before. She would even have a decent breakfast and some Gator-aid waiting for him by the time he was done having a shower.

World’s best partner.

He didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary with the extra body products in the shower stall. What got his attention was the extra toothbrush.

There was her toothbrush, the guest toothbrush (sterilised for guest protection), and now there was a third toothbrush. Labeled with ‘his’. Hers had a piece of paper tape with the sharpie’d word ‘hers’, now.

Avi was halfway through brushing his teeth when he noticed it.

Sno was busy doing the post-hangover fry-up to restore Avi’s health points, so he was able to sneak into her bedroom to search for clues. Lucretia was likely to wake up any time soon, so he made sure he put on his pants and at least threw on a shirt before wandering out of the bathroom.

Sno’s place was, as always, display room worthy. There were a few scattered toys on the vestiges of Lucretia’s room, and the fallout from making room for her surrounding a closet or two, but it was otherwise pristine.

Sno used hospital corners when she made her bed, and she made her bed every day. Sno kept everything neat. If there was any traces of anyone else there, he’d have to go looking in her closets and drawers.

That would be a definite breach of trust.

Lucretia was sitting neatly at the table when he joined it. She had laid out some picture cards as a breakfast request. A green apple, a pile of pancakes, a syrup bottle, and some whipped cream and berries.

Avi snagged his serving of fry-up and sat a safe distance away from the kid.

“Good morning,” he said.

Lucretia held up a smiling sun card.

“Looks like you picked a good breakfast,” he said. The eggs and sausage were really hitting the spot. The bacon, especially, was just what he needed. The Gator-aid definitely helped his stinging head. So did the painkillers.

Lucretia nodded.

“Still not liking the mouth-words, huh?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t give her grief about it,” warned Sno, still working on pancakes. Her cooking had improved since Lucretia had come to stay. The twins certainly helped with that, too.

“I wasn’t,” said Avi. “And I’m not going to. Words help, that’s all.”

Lucretia had a homemade card. It had Arya Stark on it and the words,  _Not today._

“Yeah, I get it,” he said. “Sure nothing new’s scaring you.”

She shook her head.

*

There had to be someone in Sno’s life. She smiled a little more, when she thought nobody was looking. She tended to hum. She was more than a little more amenable when people gave her crap.

It was a stakeout that gave him an opportunity to ask. “So. Any other changes in your life?”

“What brought this on, Burnsides?”

“I saw the extra toothbrush in your bathroom. You’ve been having sleepovers, Sno?”

“We have movie nights and he falls asleep on the couch. It’s still PG.”

“Okay. You got a plan when it gets deeper?”

“Nunya, Burnsides.”

Right. Nunya. Nun’ya business. Avi knew when to butt out. “Have I met him?”

“How do you know they’re a him?”

“His and hers labels on the toothbrushes.”

A moment of thought. “…fuck…”

Avi smirked.

*

Lucretia was talking, at last. She wasn’t exactly the world’s biggest chatterbox, but she hadn’t needed her flash cards in an entire year. That was an epic accomplishment, and therefore occasion for a party.

She was a little nerd, so the games were a little more cerebral than they should be for a six-year-old. The older kids attending didn’t mind, even though they were slightly more cerebral than the stuff they were used to.

Some aspects of it were slightly more cerebral than the  _adults_  could handle. Nevertheless, the kids adapted.

Avi was having a good enough time, and so was Magnus, who had no truck at all with the rules. “So I get three attacks, right?” the boy asks.

“Not after you double dash,” said Lucretia.

“Aw beans…”

There was one guy at the party that Avi couldn’t place. Tall dude. Looked vaguely familiar. Avi knew he’d seen him before. The only problem was that he couldn’t place the guy.

He was racking his noggin as Johaan attempted to schmooze. Bards made their money with connections.

“Having trouble, sir?” said Angus, who had once refused to find out who Sno’s mystery dude was.

“I know him. I know I know him… But where?”

“Purple tights, pirate shirt, and an 80′s glam wig,” said Angus. “Picture him wearing those.”

It clicked. The Convention Caper. Of fucking course. That Dark Elf had been cosplaying Jareth from  _Labyrinth._  Sno had been wearing a TARDIS dress because she was undercover as a nerd. The fact that she  _owned_  a TARDIS dress had flown past Avi’s notice at the time. She and ‘Jareth’ had spent a lot of time talking…

The click as it all came together was almost audible. He immediately went to Sno. “You’re dating a nerd?”

“I have depths, Burnsides. Deal with it.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DeathsKitten on Chapter 67:
> 
> AAAAHHH I love this one. Tiny cuties. How about for a request, the tiny twins first day at school? :3
> 
> [AN: I have no idea why the pic turned out sideways. If I knew how to fix it, I would]

 

"First day of school!" The twins landed on her bed, bouncing around in their excitement. "We get to go to school! We get to go to school!"

Having the twins around definitely taught her to change into sleepwear for bed _fast._ La'ming attempted to boot up her brain before she'd had her coffee, and peeked at the curtains. "...'s still dark outside."

"Yeah," said Lulu.

"We got stuff to do," said Koko.

"We gotta have a shower an' dry our hair and comb our hair..."

"...and get dressed and have a good breakfast and brush our teeth..."

"...and pack our bags and shine our shoes..."

"...and then we gotta find the _school."_

They chorused, "That's a lot of stuff, so we gotta start early."

They would not be this enthusiastic in a week. A month, tops. La'ming growled as she pried herself out of the comfortable warm and checked her bedside clock. "M'kay. You waited until five thirty, you get a grudging pass for waking me up." Yawn. Stretch. Crack a couple of joints. "I'm still not doing shit 'till I've had my coffee."

"We put it on all ready," they said in unison.

Indeed, she could hear her percolator perking, and smell the sharp tang of caffeine in the air. La'ming glared at them. "Have you two had any?"

"No..."

"Gross."

Great. All this was just natural enthusiasm, then. They still needed her to reach the high taps in the shower stall and reach the baskets where their uniforms were stored. "Okay. No putting on uniforms until after breakfast. Eat, brush your teeth, wash, then dry, okay?"

Coffee helped, as did a supervised morning feast of eggs, bacon, and crunchy waffles with honey. Then it was into their room to figure out who was wearing what. Neverwinter Primary had options for clothing, and La'ming had purchased entire sets of each. "Okay. What do you want to wear on your first day? Skirts, shorts, or skorts?" They all looked like variations on the sailor suit. Adorable.

"I want the dress," said Lulu.

"I'll have what she's having," said Koko.

La'ming didn't argue. There was bound to be a soccer mom who would, but for now? Choice was more important than what some alleged know-it-all had to say about gender presentation and clothing. Besides, they were _six._ Every complication about physicality could wait.

After the shower, and drying off, and hair-drying, and the twins dressing themselves neatly, came the hairdressing. Lulu wanted braids, Koko wanted his loose, but La'ming insisted on a clip to keep his hair out of his face at the back.

It was hard not to tear up. She'd missed out on all of this with Nono... Snocoun, now. All grown up and possibly the most menacing cop in Precinct 42. She was a proud mom, but she wouldn't get in her daughter's way. Not now.

Packing the bags was easy. Packed lunchbox (no nuts or nut byproducts, they were allergic to peanuts), four each of the requisite books (the rest were already waiting in their eventual classroom), the pencilcase, and then the beribboned hats on each of their adorable little heads.

Amazingly, it was only half-past six. Even _after_ shoes and socks. La'ming had her second cup of coffee and said, "Well, they don't expect us there before eight, so... you two get to watch cartoons."

"YAAAAY!"

"But first? Who do you trust to take you home?"

"People we know from _this_ building," they chorused.

"Except stinky Susan," said Koko.

"And the rest of her family," added Lulu.

La'ming snorted. Considering it was _Jason_ who knocked Koko out with a bag of garbage, Susan who ratted them out to CPS, and Kyle who had uncomplimentary things to say about street kids... it was no wonder they were the least-liked neighbours in their apartment block. "Don't call her that to her face, okay? It's Mrs Hackniid."

A gloomier chorus. "Okay..."

It wasn't far to walk, not really. A couple of blocks, showing them how to use the crosswalk and telling them never to cross without grownups. Koko had to be convinced to hold La'ming's hand when crossing the road. He much preferred to stay glued to his sister. Some older teens -either out early or out really late- snorted and called the twins 'baby sailors' on their way past. La'ming ignored them.

Their schoolroom was typical starter education fare. Alphabets along the walls, bright posters about good manners and good hygiene. There were two teachers, both suitably soft around the edges. One of whom squealed in delight when she saw the twins. "Hector, we have _Elves..."_

"This is Lulu and Koko Taaco," said La'ming, patting each twin on the head to indicate who was whom. "They can write their names in Common and know more about cooking than they really should at their age. Not that I'm complaining. They've taught me more about making good food than I've known all my life."

Their teacher, Mrs Pembly, smiled and leaned down. "Aw, you are the cutest little ones I've seen today. Do you like to sing?"

And that was how La'ming learned about Neverwinter Primary's almost predatory choir program. Elves almost uniformly had beautiful singing voices, and any choir was always on the lookout for them.

Mr Rorke listened to them sing _On Top of Spaghetti_ for all of five seconds before rushing out of the room in a sprint.

"Now. Mrs Taaco..."

"Oh no. I'm Ms Ton."

"She found us in a dumpster," sat Koko.

"She's our foster mom," added Lulu.

Well. That was the awkward explanation out of the way. They were shown where to put their bags, and where to store their lunchboxes, and given stickers with their names on. A blue one for Koko and a pink one for Lulu. After that, it was a tour of the important areas of the campus. The bathrooms, the playground, the cafeteria, and OH LOOK, THERE'S WHERE THE CHOIR PRACTICES WHY DON'T YOU _GO IN_ AND SHOW THEM YOU CAN SING?

This time, they were encouraged to sing one of the more popular songs on the radio.

"Are we gettin' paid for this?" asked Lulu.

"We should get paid for this," insisted Koko.

La'ming had to explain, "This is extracurricular. That means you get paid in school grade credits."

"Booo," said Lulu.

"We want _money,"_ insisted Koko.

Their career as problematic, _promising-but_ children had only just begun.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Can we get a large helping of Dad!Merle helping Ming in LD?

They were having a parents’ day in the park. Merle had custody of his kids for the weekend and La’ming... La’ming was learning to be a decent parent by studying others.

Most of the others here at the play park were nannies who didn’t speak the best of Common and used playtime as an excuse to gossip.

Merle... Merle wasn’t much better, but at least he knew something about parenting. Something - even a bad something - was better than nothing. FOr example - Merle sunbathed while Mookie threw himself around the climbing gym like a dervish and Mavis took turns on the swings or the monkeybars. His parenting involved occasional interjections involving the word "don’t”.

“Don’t wrassle kids below your weight class, Mookie...”

La’ming, using his example, kept an eye on the twins and was ready to bolt straight for them if there was the slightest hint of trouble. She also had all the approved snack foods so they’d have plenty to eat.

Food security was still a big thing for them.

Right now, though, the twins were building a sandcastle with one of the smaller, younger children. One would invariably defend the pile of sand from Mookie and other kids who liked to stomp on sandcastles.

That was when she’d need to step in and mediate. Get all involved parties to talk it out instead of fighting it out. Assuming they didn’t talk it out without prompting.

“First kids always make for an anxious parent,” said Merle, apparently from his coma. “You’re always worried about being a failure. Trust me. Kids aren’t that delicate.”

_Yes they are,_  she thought. “I abandoned my first kid with my parents when I was Seventy-two. These are the first kids I’ve actively tried looking after. That I haven’t given up on.”

“Seventy-two? Isn’t that like... way too young to have a kid?”

“Yeah. Like a Humanman sixteen or something.”

“No blame on that one, then,” said Merle.

“Tell that to my daughter. My parents are assholes.”

There was an extended silence between the two of them. Not absolute silence, since they  _were_  seated by a playground, but they were quiet. The kids continued shrieking and yelling at each other as they expended all their energies in assorted games.

“Sorry about that,” said Merle. “I assumed...”

“Many do. I don’t talk about it a lot.”

“She doing okay, now?”

“Yeah. We’re almost on speaking terms.” She twitched as Lulu fell off a swing, but relaxed as she rolled and recovered her feet. She’d  _intended_  to do that, the little daredevil. “I know how bad it can get. What I need is... how to not get there. You know?”

He chuckled. “Yeah. I know that one. Their mom and I never got along, and... The last straw was Mookie crying because we were whispering at each other. Can’t wake the baby, y’know? So we fought in whispers so the kids...” he sighed. “Didn’t work. So after we got him settled again, I asked,  _Would you be happier if I left?_  And she said ‘yes’ and we tried to handle the divorce like grown-ass people. I send her what I can spare and I live in this little room in the loft to save money and... The kids are the most important part. You do what’s best for them.”

At Seventy-two, that had been leaving her baby with the only people she could rely upon to care for her. Now that she was two hundred and thirty... it meant doing everything in her power to make sure something like that never happened again.

“I can make sure they have what they need,” she said. “I got that covered.”

“See? You’re already doing better than like half of the other assholes out there.”

“I already love them to bits.”

“Now you’re up to seventy percent,” said Merle. “Most parents I get in the Bodega? They treat kids like a chore. Something they gotta do and something they gotta put up with like they’re obligated. Not a lot of love.”

Mookie took a tumble off the high bars, landing sort-of okay, but scraping his leg on something under the sand. He stood up and blood started snaking down his leg.

“Duty calls.” Merle got up and cheered Mookie for not breaking his fool neck, and ran a minor healing spell over the injury. “No battle scars for you, champ. But let’s find that sharp thing so nobody else gets hurt.”

Mookie started digging like a dog and making vroom noises while Merle was a little more sedate and cautious. It was a sharp rock, not a piece of glass or a needle, thank the gods.

La’ming toured over to where Koko was helping another kid with their sandcastle. She said, “There’s sometimes sharp things in the sand, so you make sure the littles use their tools so they can play safe.”

Koko said, “You can stop fussing, mom. We’re fine.”

She almost floated all the way back to the bench. Mom. He’d called her  _Mom._


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LadyVin on Chapter 15 of A Little Domesticity  
> Can we please see the twins meeting Lucretia in this au?

Okay. So. Now she had a small child. A small child whose parents had died of the Neverwinter Summer Sniffles, a seasonal plague that occasionally killed despite medicine's best efforts. They had then lain where they'd died, unnoticed, until almost the middle of winter.

In all that time, little Lucretia Clark, three and a half years old, had taken money from her parents' wallet and purse, journeyed down to the Bodega, and bought herself meals. Later, when the cash ran out, she switched to the credit cards. If Avi hadn't noticed her, she may have continued until the next summer, when lower apartments would have noticed... let's call it 'the fallout'.

Sno logically deduced that Lucretia had had enough of pre-packaged, ready-made meals, and would be grateful for something homemade. She knew enough about cooking some things with a level of competence only reserved for eating the results herself. As part of the process of luring Lucretia out of her shell, she took the kid to the local bodega for some shopping.

"I know you've had enough of food that comes straight out of boxes, bags, and bottles," she said. "So you pick out any ingredients you like and I'll cook you up some dinner out of everything you pick out. Sound good?"

So far, this kid had only ever communicated by pointing, nodding, or shaking her head. She sat in the trolley comfortably enough, but kept one tiny hand on Sno's at all times.

"Just get 'er the dinosaurs," rasped the Dwarf who staffed the counter. "Never had a kid turn down the nugs."

Sno, who knew two such kids, said, "Thanks, but I'm letting her choose."

It was hard to tell, at this point, whether the three-and-a-half-year-old Lucretia Clarke was just a shy, quiet kid or somehow traumatised into muteness or had just never caught on to talking. So far, she'd communicated largely by body language and Snocoun had to wonder if she had a hearing disorder.

Was she reading, or was she playing at reading? Sno had watched the kid's eyes jinking over words on the page and had to admit that yes, she was reading. She was reading pretty fast for a little kid barely out of pampers, too. Not reading out loud, though. Not using her voice. Was she incapable of talking? Selectively mute? Painfully shy? There were no obvious answers for Sno.

Nevertheless, the district shrink told her to keep up the chatter, keep it friendly, and keep it gentle. That meant that when Sno was watching Talking Heads television, she had to keep it to the friendlier talking heads. Nobody yelling about things, just to be sure that nothing would cause little Lucretia to go back into her shell. Well. Further back. Sno couldn't figure how much further this kid could go without being in a fucking coma... but there they were.

"I have to tell you, this shopping trip has been interesting," she cooed, unloading the grocery bags. "Letting a three-year-old pick out the food shouldn't end well, but you got me more veggies than I'm used to." All the colourful stuff, too. Purple cabbage and yellow bell peppers and some weird things she wasn't even sure were edible. "I'm not even sure I can make a meal out of this lot. Thank the gods there's an app for that." She had several, in fact. All of which claimed to be able to make meals out of whatever she could photograph

Lucretia browsed what there was of Sno's bookshelf. The stuff that wasn't books the twins had left behind was a bunch of lurid science fiction and fantasy. Sno had never been one for bodice-rippers, so those books were more or less safe. No gore, for certain. Sno got enough of that in her day job. The most a kid like Lucretia could expect from Sno's books was the occasional complicated word.

"Well," she singsonged. "I could make an interesting stir-fry out of this, even with the dragonfruit. I think you're a little too young for anything spicy, so nothing stronger than ginger..." She had one egg, not enough for the recipe. She didn't have ginger, or the right kind of salt.

Worse, some of the instructions were a little bit more complicated than the kind Sno was used to - stab the plastic with a fork and microwave on high for five minutes. Therefore, the next thing she did was call her mother.

She scooped up Lucretia, reading material and all. Balanced the little baby Humanman on her hip as the phone rang. Lucretia was content to keep reading and used Sno's shoulder as a rest for her book. "Hello, mother." She had never been comfortable with calling La'ming 'mom'. "The twins there? I need some recipe words decoded."

La'ming put it on speakerphone and got into conference with the twins. After that, it was unriddling a sum total of four words before the kids finally tutted at her and said, "Don't move a muscle."

Koko said, "We're on our way before you start messing up the prep."

Lulu said, "What ingredients do you not have?"

Sno started listing them off.

"Oh yeah, we're bringing the essentials."

Sno purchased a dozen eggs and some dry ginger powder while they were on their way, and allowed Lucretia to have a marshmallow pop shaped like a cartoon duck.

She tried reading along with Lucretia and earned a baleful glare from the kid.

"Yeah. I know. You can do it yourself."

Then the family arrived.

"Tidy up," said Lucretia, proving that she could speak. "Company's here."

Okay. So she did talk. That was something. Now she had to run interference. Lucretia was happy with her book, and not inclined to bolt. All the same... "I'm stepping out into the hall to talk to some people, okay? I'm not going anywhere far. It's just a few minutes."

She ducked outside, just as her mother and her adopted sibs started up the stairs.

She halted them before they could reach her door. "Okay. I need some ground rules with all of you."

The twins, age nearly-seven, huddled closer to La'ming.

* * *

 

"Listen," said Aunty Sno. "She's been through some shit and she's only four. So none of your usual horseshit, okay? I just barely got her talking and if you all barge in here like the forces of nature you are, you might just mess up like months of therapy. Got it?"

Koko grinned. "It's cool, Aunty. We just wanna see the only kid in the universe who isn't terrified of you."

"She has to have gone through some shit to not be scared of you," said Lulu.

"Come on," cooed Momma La'ming. "I wanna see my new grandbaby."

"She's not--" Aunty Sno sighed. "I'm fostering her, the poor mite. I'm the only person she even trusts so far, so... Please. Be gentle with the kid, okay?"

They all swore to be gentle. Koko remembered being on the streets and terrified of everything including Aunty Sno, so when he came into the brand new playroom, he did so in stocking feet.

_Oh my sweet Gods, she is fucking tiny..._

She was almost four, like Aunty Sno said, and quite dark in her skin tone despite her blonde curls.

"Were we ever that small?" said Lulu, articulating Koko's thoughts.

"Smaller, probably," Koko admitted. "Hey there, li'l cuz. We're your mom's adopted sibs."

The kid looked up from her book, thicker than most stuff you'd give a tiny child, and marked her place with a cord. She waved.

"Silent type, huh. I can dig it. I'm Lulu," said Lulu, offering her hand. "This is my dumb baby brother Koko."

"She thinks forty-five minutes counts," said Koko. "I thought babies couldn't read thick books. Are the pages cardboard or what?" He reached out to just see...

The kid flinched it away, getting up to double-dash for the safety of Aunty Sno's legs.

Wow. Aunty Sno wasn't kidding about this kids' skittishness stat.

He backed away from the book and sat down, and interlinked his hands behind his neck. "I'm sorry," he said. "Didn't wanna scare ya. Me 'n' Lulu an' our mom just came over to see you and help cook up some dinner. Y'know? Our mom is Sno's mom, so I'm like... your uncle or something?"

She looked up to Sno, who nodded. "Elven families are kind'a nebulous. The twins are technically my siblings, so you... if you want me as your mother... you get them as an aunty and an uncle."

"We're family," said Koko. "I ain't gonna hurt ya."

Slowly, by small degrees, Lucretia edged out of hiding and picked up the book she had dropped. Just as cautiously, Koko offered the bookmark on his open palm. "See?" he said. "You're okay."

In the kitchen, Lulu and Mom were working out things from available ingredients. They had this. It was up to him to put this poor nervous kid at ease.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Hey, how about Sno being involved in a hostage situation (not taken hostage, but helping negotiate) and Ming and all the kids and trying not to panic as it plays out. Luce is v concerned

Lucretia had just turned five when the Event happened. She had a few words that she would use when there were no alternatives, but this was not one of them.

“Mom!”

The twins came running, so did Gramma La’ming, who Lucretia secretly called ‘Gramming’ in her occasional playful moments. Not that she said that out loud. She rarely said anything out loud.

Her extended, adopted family were careful to circle around so she could see who was coming even when all her attention was transfixed on the TV, and the news it contained.

Her adopted mother was on the TV. Slowly approaching some house in suburbia and she had her vest on and her hands empty. Lucretia could read the crawler. She could read all of it.

_Hostage situation in lower east end,_  was the main one. There were also words that zipped by like  _gunman,_  and  _drug bust gone wrong,_  and  _possible fatalities._  The twins knew what was up.

“You need a hug?” offered Koko.

“You need a Sammich?” said Lulu. It was family shorthand for both twins holding her like comforting brackets.

“Sammich,” she nodded. She didn’t close her eyes as the twins squeezed in, keeping her eyes on the screen for any hint of what her mom was doing. Gramming patted her lightly on the head as if to say,  _I will be right back with what you need._

In a moment, she heard the dryer going and smelled the special hot chocolate. Therefore, in just a few minutes, there would be warm beverages in all hands and a warm blanket tucked around all three of them.

“Aunt Sno knows her suff,” said Lulu. “She’s gonna be okay.”

The words zipping across the screen said,  _Armed gunman allegedly high on Bad Dreams, a dangerous new drug on the streets of Neverwinter._  Lucretia couldn’t listen to any of the words that the people were saying, no matter how clear their speech nor piercing their voices. Her attention was fixed firmly on the scrolling words and the tiny blue figure in uniform, whenever she turned up in the shaking camera’s view.

She was glas of the hot chocolate and the warmth of the blanket when her mom stepped inside the building.

“She’s got this,” repeated Koko between slurping at marshmallows. “She’s got this sewn up...”

“It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna all be--”

The popping noise sounded clearly above the on-scene commentator. The camera view shattered into a flurry of blurs and incomprehensible movement. The twins had hands over her eyes and over her ears, but it was too late.

Shots had been fired.

Every cop’s kid knew what shots fired could mean.

Lucretia clawed at the twins’ hands, screaming, “No, no, no,” over and over. She was screaming. The twins were screaming. Gramming was screaming. Even Aunt Mak’arune was screaming. They were all so loud that the Pithons came down from upstairs, one of the Montlings in their arms, to see what the ruckus was.

They let Lucretia hold the baby instead of the hot chocolate. Something about a small and helpless being in her arms provided an oasis in a sea of emotions. The TV was showing the house, at an even worse distance than previously. The words,  _Shots fired!_  crawled across the screen. Endlessly.

Some more people in uniform rushed in. There was no sign of anyone for too long. Koko’s hair had frizzed right up out of stress and Lulu’s wasn’t far behind. Lucretia knew, without a doubt, that if it wasn’t for the little Montling in her arms, she would be a total wreck.

Then, like a miracle, a blue figure in uniform walked out. There was a human-sized bag on a stretcher, and some other people with blankets around them.

Lucretia paid all her attention to the blue figure with blue hair. “Mommy... mom...”

“She’s okay,” Lulu cheered. “She’s okay, she’s all right!”

Someone - probably Uncle Avi - leaped on her from amongst the wall of uniforms keeping the public at bay, landing in a hug.

Mom gave him a noogie and shoved him away in the way that she always did for Uncle Avi.

Then they cut away to a Porky Pig cartoon.

It was over. Mom was okay.

When Mom came home, she was mobbed by family. Lucretia wrapped herself around her legs, and the twins only added to that burden. Gramming and Aunty Mak’arune all but tackled her in the doorway. There were a lot of tears.

The news, much cut down to a five-minute segment about drug violence in Neverwinter, had everything boiled down to the essentials. It held no horrors for Lucretia. Not any more.

Mom held her on her lap, that night, feeding Lucretia because she wouldn’t let go. Just like it had been for the first couple of days in Mom’s care.

Mom kept holding her, kept kissing her forehead, kept purring, and kept saying, “It’s going to be okay. The Chief has seen to it that I shouldn’t be in that much trouble any more. We’re going to be okay.”

Tomorrow, she might believe it.

Two days after that, she learned that there had been a kid at the scene. A tiny scrap of a boy who had also run afoul of the Foster system and had been found in a literal doghouse after all the news cameras lost interest.

His name was Magnus, and Mom was pulling some strings to have him fostered with Uncles Avi and Johaan.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Can I get some of that Avi trying to set up Sno while Mukaara watches? Also a side of Avi thinking he is best wingman

[AN: This happens before the toothbrush incident]

“So-o-o-o... you got a type or what?”

They were on stake-out, with little to talk about any more, so of course the conversation turned to matters of the heart. Avi was very happy with Johaan and wanted to see that kind of happiness spreading around.

“Stop trying to set me up, Burnsides...” Sno peeked through the binoculars. No movement from the guy they were staking out. He was having a quiet night in. Apparently.

“Hey, if anyone deserves some happiness with a special someone, it's you, buddy.” He added a mock punch. “You’ve been through more than your fair share of shit. You deserve happiness. You deserve love.”

“I can find it on my own. Thanks.”

“At least tell me about your dream date.”

Sno could see him every time she blinked. “Tall. Dark. Nerdy. He’s got this weird laugh and a sorta... skewiff smile. Kind’a awkward, but... honest awkward. The nice guy that doesn’t advertise, you know?”

“Thirty guys at the precinct just lost a bet that you’re a lesbian,” said Avi. “Nerdy types, huh?”

“Yeah. I like me a man with an astonishing grasp of Klingon.”

Avi laughed at that, and the discussion devolved into some areas of nerditry that Avi - a born Jock - was familiar with. But that was the moment that lead, inexorably, inevitably, to one of the most excruciating evenings of Snocoun Ton’s life.

Avi had set her up with a nerd from Miller Labs, a favour he had managed to wrangle after solving some case involving volatile chemicals, smugglers, and a rare species of parrot. Sno had gone along because she thought her partner had somehow found out about a completely  _different_  nerd who also worked for Miller Labs.

For a fleeting moment, Sno daydreamed about not having to come clean because the other man in her life had already figured things out for her.

Then Mukaara bowed Lucas fucking Miller into the restaurant seat opposite her and took a seat at a group table with a bunch of other executive assistants. He made sure he had a good view, the rat bastard.

“Wow,” said Sno, glaring at Avi. He was gurning and making positive hand signals through the window like the over-eager puppy he had to have been reincarnated from. “When he said he had someone high up in Miller Labs, I didn’t expect anyone  _this_  high up.”

Mukaara, over at the assistants’ table, was watching her over his menu with a devilish gleam in his sky-blue eyes.

“I... thought I’d be getting someone a little further down the totem pole. Like an assistant...”

Lucas Miller spat a little as he talked. “Yes, well. I understand your shock and awe. It’s rare that I meet a lady who’s of the right calibre to date someone like me. I mean. You can’t get much higher in the Miller Labs internal structure without going to my Mom and -haha- that’s my job. Haha.”

“Haha,” echoed Sno, deadpan.

In the window behind Miller, Avi was using his fingers as antennae and attempting a Vulcan salute. He rolled ones for his skill check on the latter. He blatantly mouthed,  _Talk nerdy nerd stuff._

“But seriously,” said Miller, “I’m a nice guy and -to be humble- one of the top ten geniuses of our time. I’m more than a little particular about the kind of girl that gets my attention.”

 _Oh shit. Red flag. Abort! Abort!_  Sno looked to the window for Avi, and only saw the tail end of his scarf as one of the restaurant staff shooed him away from the exterior. Mukaara was talking to a waiter and couldn’t get any of her covert signals.

And worse, she’d paid in advance for the table. She’d better eat here or the deposit would have been spent for nothing.

“What kind of girl might that be?” she cooed, playing nice. Maybe if she played all her cards wrong, she could escape this travesty and never have to contact Miller again.

Miller started waxing lyrical about the women he’d had crushes on since childhood. All of them, Sno noted, owed their existence to cell animation. The few she recognised were all the same type - big-busted, addle-brained, cutesey-wutesy doormats.

_Gods, please get me out of here..._

* * *

 

To think, Mukaara pondered, he had been worried that Sno might start falling for his boss. He should never have been so concerned.

Lucas Miller had a type, and it was generally found printed on a cover for a body pillow. Despite that, he expected any flesh and blood woman to pass a trivia test in order to qualify for his attention.

So far, Sno was passing. When she was allowed to get a word in edgewise.

Mukaara watched the disaster unfold. Lucas had already completely failed to notice Sno’s severe lack of interest in him since three seconds in. Sno’s face was a rictus when she wasn’t desperately mouthing,  _Help me!_  in Mukaara’s direction.

Entrees had been survived. The main course arrived with -oh gods- Lucas’ opinion on Elves.

“It’s all well and good saying that terrible things happened in living memory,” he was lecturing, “but Elves live for a million years or more. You guys should take a joke or two.”

“Seven hundred and fifty,” corrected Sno. “Eight hundred if they manage clean living.”

Lucas didn’t appear to hear her. “So what if the Xenophobia wars were in living memory? That could mean a thousand years ago! They ended four hundred years ago.”

“They ended forty years ago,” corrected Sno. “They  _started_  four hundred years ago.”

“They need to let it go.”

“Millions died. Elf kind were almost wiped out.”

“Yes, yes, yes... But it happened so long ago. The damage is repaired. The population is back to normal. Almost beyond normal. There’s no more need to keep crying about it.”

Mukaara flinched. Nope. She wasn’t going to hit him, but it was a close thing.

“Trouble?” said Rinnu.

“Almost. If he keeps talking about the Xenowars, there’s going to be.”

“Yeah?”

“Her  _mother_  was one of the last casualties of the Xenowars...”

Winces, hisses, and whistling backwards. Something expensive was doomed to happen.

“What about your opinion on Steampunk?” said Sno rather desperately. A safe way to move things to something Lucas loved to do - deliver his opinion.

Sno’s expression ranged from relief through boredom, to being ten thousand percent done with everything that came out of Lucas’ mouth.

On the plus side, that particular classification would not include -say- his teeth.

On the minus side... poor Sno was suffering for a fancy dinner.

He’d have to make it up for her at a later date. Perhaps a marathon session of bad food and worse television and a good, solid session of Mock That Movie.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kat on Chapter 1 of A Little Domesticity:  
> Magnus???!!?!?!? I need to know more about my boy please?

Clean-up after the fact of a hostage situation was terrible, so of course the Chief gave it to Sno. She should have been receiving a medal of bravery from the Mayor or something, but no. Elves didn't get acknowledgement unless the public cried out for it, and they weren't going to be doing that any time soon. The Xenophobia  _wars_  may be over, but the xenophobia lingered on.

Sno was used to it. The reward for a shitty job well done was yet another shitty job. Possibly a shittier one, though it was hard to top scraping up families following a domestic dispute turned hostage hold-out and drug cartel combo.

Something... was off. Something had changed since she'd been there the day before. Forensics was still sweeping up the lab in the basement, attic, and three of the seven bedrooms, so her patrol was the front and back yard for any further evidence. While she didn't have a photographic memory, there was a definite difference in the trash. Something had been going through it.

Sno got on her radio. "Be advised, there may be a pet on the premises. Could also be a raccoon or a possum..." She tiptoed into the yard, being sure to silence the gate's squeak as she did so. There were mountains of debris in the back yard. A trailer, almost buried under scrap and empty bottles and random pieces of decaying lumber. Half a car, almost buried under a drift of tyres and bicycle parts. And a plastic dog house, almost buried under rusting car parts.

There was a chain, and a recent disturbance in the packed earth, and... Those weren't dog prints. Those were hands and toes.

She got on the radio. "Cancel that call for animal services. Get a bus and some hot food. There's a kid back here."

Someone in dispatch swore. They had swept the house for inhabitants, but not the yard.

Sno sat and tried to appear non-threatening. Not her strongest skill. "There's help coming," she said in a singsong voice. "They'll have some proper food for you, but... I got jerky." She made a show of taking out the packet she usually kept for dealing with dogs. She opened it up and split a big piece in half, putting one half in her mouth and offering the other half to the cavern within the engine blocks and doors. "It's okay," she said. "See? I'm eating it. It's fine."

The kid that came out was so filthy that Sno could not initially tell his skin tone. There was a choke chain around his neck that attached to the longer chain that had a winding length to a post set in deep concrete. He was dressed only in a tank top and some underpants, and his hair was matted and uneven. There were crusting flakes of blood and dark patches under the dirt. She could see his joints poking out on either side of stick-thin limbs. If he pulled up his tank top, Sno had no doubt that she would see his ribs.

He said, "Am I good enough t' be allowed to eat, now?"

"Of course you are," she said. "It's okay. It's all okay."

He snatched the jerky off her open fingers and huddled back in the door of the plastic house as he crammed it quickly into his mouth. The fact that he picked up an axe handle to defend himself was telling.

Sno patiently waited, letting him take piece after piece of jerky. She told him her name, and what she was doing there, and what happened to the rest of his family.

His name was Magnus, and he was distantly related to one of the women of the household, or so they said. He was wicked, and evil, and the proof was the fact that he kept messing up and winding up in the doghouse. Literally. The big man was teaching him to behave proper, and if Mags was good enough, he'd be allowed to have food. If he was really good, he'd be allowed inside, and have clothes, and be allowed to get clean. It was his fault, he said, for always picking fights with Elrestle Kalen.

Sno asked, "How old is this Elrestle Kalen?"

"Old. Like nineteen or something."

"And... how do you start these fights?"

"I don't even know," Mags protested. "That's why I'm so bad. I can't even tell how I start it, but El says I do, so I gotta be starting it. He just walks right on up and socks me in the gut and then..." he jerked a thumb at the doghouse. "I'm wicked."

Sno edged the chain off him. "You're not wicked. They... they were..." What would be the right word. "They made a mistake." She wrapped him up in her coat, and eased him into her arms. "They made a lot of mistakes, and they're taking time out... and... you're gonna get a new home."

The CPS would see to it that he would get a bath and proper meals and shelter, and he might even think it was the best deal, but... He needed better security than a foster home or a grey-walled orphanage. He needed better than the official channels. Besides, she'd seen the ruin that official channels could wreak.

There were a few strings she could pull. A home that he could go to where he would be more than cleaned and fed and clothed and sheltered. A place where he would be loved. She knew. Avi and Johaan had been working for so long and working so hard at being adoptive parents. All to no success so far.

Sno knew people who owed her big. Who would help in any way they could. Sure, it would cost her another year or three of official notice and recognition, but... what else was new?

She got out her phone and dialled one of the numbers. "Hey, it's me," she said. "You remember the little business last year? I'm collecting."

* * *

 

Magnus clung tight to Officer Sno's hand as they climbed the stairs in the block of flats. So far, there had been a hospital, and a bunch of people in white coats, and needles, but there had been lots of good food and he was always comfortable and rarely cold, so it balanced out.

"I thought foster homes were full of people," he said. There were twin Elves peering at him from a higher railing, and a small Naga peeked down the stairs at him.

"This is... a different kind of foster home. These two are just starting. It'll be you and them for... some time, I think."

There was a door just like any other door, and a number. And a doorknob. Officer Sno knocked.

_"What's Aunty Nono up to?"_  one of the Elves whispered.

_"Who's that kid?"_  whispered the other one.

The door opened, revealing a grownup Human, similar in colour to Magnus, and a darker-skinned Half-Elf just behind him. "Hey, pardner. Hi, little guy."

"Ohmygods, he's adorable," said the Half-Elf. "And this is okay with everyone?"

"It'd better be," said Officer Sno.

The Human offered his hand. "My name's Avi Burnsides, and this is my husband Johaan. We'd... we..."

"We'd like to be your dads," said Johaan.

"Whoah..." Magnus whispered. "For reals?"

"For reals," said the new dads together.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> I never see Lucas used enough in stories can we get some Lucas and Sno romance?

[AN: You did read the same story I wrote, right? I can’t cement  _that_  kind of Lucas with Sno. However...]

She wasn’t his type. He knew it. She was a ‘column’ while he preferred an ‘hourglass’. Even then, the ones in meatspace were never ‘hourglass’ enough for his fancy. If only he could make animation real... But that was still beyond his scientific grasp.

In the meantime, real women confounded him. They never had the same rule set from girl to girl. They never followed The Game, they never acted like they should. They were never predictable.

Especially this one. Snocoun Ton. She was the exact opposite of everything he wanted in a woman. Flat where he expected shape. Tall where she should have been short. Possessing opinions where she should have been agreeable.

Yet he could not stop thinking about her.

That low fire in her eyes, like a wild storm. Energy waiting to be unleashed, and held back by the thinnest of facades. She exuded unresolved tension and he could sense that it was aimed at him.

He tried to take his mind off it by watching some previews on his computer. She’d never call him back. They never did, and he never minded. Usually, a good half hour’s exposure to proper women - animated women - would scour his brain clean of even thinking about the lady he had been with that night.

Not this time.

This time, the previews included one about history. Sort of. Historical fiction about the xenophobia wars and a Beach Elf torn between two or more loves. The dates couldn’t be right. The Xenophobia wars ended four hundred years ago, but this was  _set_  four hundred years ago and was about how they  _started._

Lucas did some googling and journeys through an extended wiki walk and learned...

She had been right.

_She looked just like the maiden in the anime..._

The producers had done a lot of homework to set this one in a plausibly accurate time and place. Where things could have taken a different path,  _if only..._

In this show,  _Fires in Elfington,_  they bragged about how it was the first Humanman drama to cast Elves in a sympathetic light inside of five hundred years. Lucas absorbed all the extra material they had around on the internet and even managed to catch the premier episode.

He was even more enraptured than before. All they had to do was change the heroine’s hair from deep plum to a fiery red and she would be the spitting image of Snocoun Ton.

Inspired, Lucas decided to see what was available online about her. Just to sate his curiosity and realise that she was not an animated girl come to life.

Oh shit. She might be.

She fought injustice at every turn. Just like the animated Syn’amon. She struggled against oppression and prejudice, just like Syn’amon. She did everything she could for lost, abandoned, or orphaned kids. Just like Syn’amon. She let opportunities for advancement slide by for the greater good... just like Syn’amon.

By three AM, Lucas had seen the second episode of  _Fires in Elfington,_  and had developed a raging crush. Not just for Syn’amon, but also for her true flesh doppelganger, Snocoun Ton.

The next dawn saw him scouring the internet for material - any material - about episode three. He was so desperate that he was trawling through the fanfiction already springing up about the show.

Then he found an interesting article. The show creators had looked to real world examples for their characters and... there was a picture of Officer Ton with a small child carried in her coat right next to a picture of Syn’amon nursing a bear cub in a similar pose.

He read every word and saved it into his growing fandom file. No wonder Officer Ton looked like Syn’amon. She  _was_  Syn’amon.

When he finally went to sleep, he dreamed of her. Skipping through the mangroves like her animated counterpart, fighting evil. Righting wrongs. Rescuing him and falling in love...

It was a glorious dream.

It was so influential on him that he felt he had to make amends. A big bunch of flowers, for sure. Ladies loved flowers.

He tracked down her precinct offices and asked to see here as soon as it was convenient. She was likely out, busy being a hero. Whilst not exactly rescuing bear cubs from forest fires, she was certainly rescuing the weak and helpless from the forces of terror. Even if they were the more mundane ones, like domestic abuse or fights between different adults. Or saving them from gangs or kissing some guy by the vending machines - what?

He was a stringbean of a fellow. Dark grey skin, pale, pale blond hair.

_She looks so different when she smiles like that..._  he thought. Then, as his brain caught up with current events,  _Is that my executive assistant?_

Officer Ton noticed him, and the smile fell off her face. In an instant, a professional mask was in the place of genuine emotion. It was an expression eerily similar to the one she had worn on their date, the previous evening.

Realisation hit him like a bucket of cold, stale vomit.  _Oh..._  He offered the flowers anyway and said, “I came to apologise for being a jerk,” he said. “You were right. You were right about everything. I’m sorry.”

“Uh. Thanks,” said Officer Ton.

Mukaara was wearing casual nerd, instead of the suit he wore on the job. His T-shirt said,  _I’m not stupid, I’m not expendable, and I’m not going._  The jeans he had on were headed slowly towards being disreputable. “Is there a problem at the office, sir?” he said.

Lucas fought with his newfound ethics. He could make one up that would keep Mukaara busy for hours on end, and therefore gain some time with Officer Ton, but... She would not appreciate the ruse. “No,” he said, realising that she could also plausibly kick his ass as well. “I just... I just came to say sorry. I’ll be... working on some stuff by myself. You know how it goes.”

“Have fun, sir,” said Mukaara.

Lucas spent a moment in heartsore agony watching his assistant kiss his crush. Her ears actually flirted with being veretical when she was with him. At all other times, they were pointed down. She was happy. With Mukaara. Not him. “You too,” he said, and meant it.

It was a strange creature that shambled back to his lab to noodle on his random projects. He looked like Lucas Miller, he answered to that name. In all ways but the metaphysical, he  _was_  Lucas Miller. Except...

Something enormous had changed. Something profound had altered his soul.

He had found... courtly love; and he was going to use it to change the world.

But first... he just  _had_  to order that Syn’amon body pillow cover from Geeklord dot com.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Since it looks like you're taking fic requests, I would love to see more of your lovely, lovely Johavi content, especially for the LD universe. Domestic fluff, the proposal, anything that strikes your fancy.

Magnus was in a comfortable pocket of warm and, just for a moment, he had to wonder how he got it. Then his noggin caught up with his waking senses and he remembered. He had a room of his own. He had a bed. He had a new family.

...and speaking of...

Dad Johaan was singing. “...the world says hello... you twinkle above us, we twinkle below...” some notes happened thanks to the pots and pans in the kitchen.

Magnus stretched in his bed just because he could. He dislodged his plushie dog in the process. That tore it. He had to get up. Not that that was a horrible thing any more. There was no more yelling. No more being bad.

He padded out to the bathroom and enjoyed free access to facilities that were once rigidly controlled in the foster homes. Soap. Warm water. Kind people who talked about how he made mistakes and how they could all work to make the next time better. He had hit the big time.

Dad Johaan was mixing up stuff in the kitchen as he sang. Magnus joined into the song. “...sabba sibby sabba, nooby abba nabba, le le lo lo...”

Dad Johaan smiled, snagging out the helper stool with a foot and putting the batter bowl down before handing the whisk to Magnus. This was the best, keeping the goo moving while one of his dads worked on the next bit.

“What do you reckon, little man? What’s the best pancakes this morning?”

“Bacon pancakes, makin’ bacon pancakes,” Magnus sang.

“Take some bacon and ya put it in a pancake,” Dad Johaan joined in.

Papa Avi emerged, all rumpled and hanging on to his PJ bottoms, “Bacon pan-caaaaaaakes...” He found the drawstring at last and did it up. “I have to say that there is such a thing as too much bacon, short stuff. You gotta have two berry pancakes for every bacon pancake you eat, buddy.”

“You need vitamin C,” added Dad Johaan. “I didn’t go to a nutrition course to have you, only to feed you bacon twenty-four sev.”

Magnus said, “I can eat like twenty-one pancakes,” as if he really could. He knew what his dads were going to say, so he joined the chorus. “One at a time, little man.”

“I gotta shower, you okay, babe?”

“I think I can survive,” said Dad Johaan. The instant Papa Avi left his sight, he play-acted at growing weak. “Oh no. The love of my life is gone from my sight. My vitality... fading...”

A voice from the bathroom, “Oh give over!” Water started running and Papa Avi started rendering  _I Will Always Love You._  In this case, render, as in to tear asunder. Papa Avi had a terrible singing voice.

That didn’t stop Dad Johaan smiling goopily at it anyway. Magnus was allowed to help with the pancakes, but not the bacon. It spat and neither of his dads wanted him getting fat burns from that. That didn’t stop Magnus hovering like a vulture as the bacon fried inside puddles of syrup.

When Dad got stung, all he had to say was ‘ow’. Magnus had only wondered out loud, once, how much it could really hurt. He’d made the mistake of saying that it couldn’t hurt more than the cigarettes had and Dad had cried almost all day. When Papa came home, he’d heard from Dad and then there had been hugs all night.

Magnus decided not to mention what the old foster homes had done with him, any more. His dads were happier that way.

The bacon pancakes were slightly smaller than the berry ones, and Magnus wanted to complain about that. Bacon was his favourite food group, after all. He  _wanted_  to complain, but he wasn’t brave enough to do that yet.

Papa came out again, this time crisp in a fresh uniform and messing with his tie. He looked at the yield and said, “Those bacon pancakes are a little small. Better let him have an extra one when he’s nearly done, eh?”

“YAAAAYYY!” Magnus jumped at the news. Any morning with extra bacon was a good one.

Dad had a travel mug of coffee and a breakfast burrito for Dad, and the lunchbox they had all packed that night. It had some special envelopes inside, with messages from Dad and Magnus each.

“Go get the bad guys, Papa.”

“Try my best, squirt,” Papa ruffled his hair and picked Magnus up for the best bit of every morning. The squish.

Dad and Papa hugged, with Magnus squished in the middle and the world was going to be wonderful for a whole ‘nother day. The only thing that made it better was making sure all the cheeks were smooched, which was another morning ritual.

Breakfast and school and all the other stuff was okay, but this? This was the best.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CR1810 on Chapter 22 od A Little Domesticity:  
> ...  
> Could you do a chapter where Taako and Lup meet Magnus properly? I'd absolutely adore that!

It was raining, and the assembled children of the apartment building were playing the sort of game that happens after a week of rain and being cooped up indoors with nothing to do and nowhere to go. If it had a name, it would be called  _Bedlam._  It involved a lot of shrieking, a lot of laughter, and a  _lot_  of thundering up and down the staircase in a wanton display of frenetic frustration.

There were rules, of course. Faster ones to the outside, slowest on the inside. Those running down fast must wait until  _all_  those running down fast  _were_  down before commencing the thunder back upstairs. Where the first waited for the last, anew.

Baby Agnes, three years old and tailed by one parent at a time, was playing her own version of the game, which involved jumping from stair to stair and across the intervening levels whilst anouncing "Jump!" for each bound. She had been up and down the staircase five times and both parents were hoping her energy would run out soon.

Johaan set up a camp chair on the level where he resided with his husband Avi Burnsides and his new adopted son Magnus. He had his violin nearby and a coiled way of sitting that spoke volumes about his readiness to leap up at the first sign of trouble and sing them Healing Word. He attempted to hide his nervousness by offering his rowdy young son a high five every time he passed. So far, he had sore hands  _and_  a growing ulcer.

...scrreeeeeEEEEEEEEEeeeeee(slap)eeeeaaamm... went the thundering horde. Two Elves, a surprisingly loud little Humanman, and three out of five Montlings who were using their hands to provide both thunder and the edge they needed to keep up with the kids who had legs. After a minute, baby Agnes was spotted on her way down.

"Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!"

"Jump, jump," sighed Angus McDonald, landlord and co-resident. He spotted a fellow parental and sighed, "Five PM, at the earliest. Momma, Poppa, my  _feeeet huuurrrt..."_

Johaan laughed. "It'll be legs and tails with the rest. They need to run, but there's nowhere to run in."

"Ah, city life," sighed Angus as Agnes jumped her way around to the next set of stairs.

The thundering horde went past again, this time a very familiar antagonist followed them to loom at Johaan. Crisp, photo-ready clothes. Impractical shoes that cost a weeks' wages or more. The bleached-blonde, "I want to talk to the manager," haircut. The general air of superior disapproval. "Are you supervising these brats?" Susan Hakniid demanded.

About the only people who actually liked Susan were her useless blob of a son and her cohort of fellow wine moms who believed that they could fix the whole world with vegan essential oils and astrological charts. Well, maybe also her husband, who seemed nominally involved in her life and parenting her son.

Johaan had hated her the instant she compared him to "a mommy" and asked him why he was wearing pants. "I'm just watching my kid," he said. "And -you know- being ready in case someone else gets hurt."

"Someone should be employing proper parenting methods with these tearaways," Susan opined. "Who's in charge, here?"

The elevator, an old cage thing from the dawn of time, whirred past them via the centre of the stairwell. "That would be me, Mrs Hakniid," said Angus McDonald, cradling baby Agnes in his arms. "By the way, have you repaired the damage your son did to the walls, yet? And has he gone to any of his court-mandated anger management classes yet?"

Susan's face looked like a smacked bottom, and she had no further opinions on the relative parenting skills in the apartments.

Meanwhile, the kids had gone quiet. Johaan crept down the stairs far enough to make certain they weren't in danger, and discovered that they were taking a break to catch their collective breaths.

* * *

 

"Hey, you're right," gasped Magnus. "Montlings  _are_  nice and comfy to lean on."

"You're welcome," said Monty Jr. "You mammals are nice and warm."

"You're welcome," chirped one of the twin Elves.

"Magnus Burnsides," said Magnus, vaguely offering a hand to anyone nearby. "2D."

"I'm Lulu, and this is my dumb baby brother, Koko."

Koko stage whispered, "She thinks forty-five minutes longer alive makes her superior. Humor her."

"Forty-five minutes and technically a day," corrected Lulu. "You might understand when you reach my age, brother-dear."

Koko made flapping puppet motions and mouthed,  _Blah, blah, blah, blah..._  as she spoke.

"My name's actually Sandehra," said another Montling. "But we kind'a all look like each other, so... we let everyone get away with calling us 'Montlings'."

"Fair enough," allowed Magnus. "My dads have got like,  _every_  kid movie ever made in their DVD collection. Wanna come an' watch some? We can make popcorn an' stuff

"Sure, sure," breezed Koko. "It'd make a change from watching  _Pretty Pony Princess Petunia_  for the umpty-billionth time."

Lulu hit him.

"Aw dang," Magnus teased. "That's one of my favourites." Then he watched in glee as Koko realised this was a goof.

"Yeah, you're gonna fit right in," announced Monty Jr.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DeathsKitten on Chapter 11:  
> Awww this is so sweet!   
> I'd love to see more of this tiny Magnus too!  
> Magnus is a pretty rough and tumble kid, and he's always jumping in to defend others.   
> How did his boisterous nature affect his relationships with the twins, when they first met? I know Taako gets anxious easily, and sometimes has panic attacks, did Magnus ever set that off with his excitement, or does his call to protect people actually have him taking care of Taako and calming him when he gets worked up?

  
Miller's Academy of Learning offered something for everyone. They certainly had accomodations for every stage of learnings. Which was a good thing because the twins were pretty smart and quick on the uptake whilst others... well...

Magnus Burnsides had won Most Improved at colouring in.

Koko and Lulu were playing a game with some of their spells. Koko had summoned a pale blue hand made of light and warped air that was throwing stones and random debris up in the air, whilst Lulu was shooting them down with fire bolts.

Magnus crept up on them, concealed in the shrubbery. He loved playing with the twins, for all that they were a few years older than he was. This was his chance to get some kind of edge on them. They were always smarter and faster and more cunning, but he could be sneakier. Closer... and closer...

Koko was concentrating on something more complicated than a cantrip. Messing around with a couple of spell ingredients and focussing on the words.

Magnus jumped up behind him, shouting, "MAGNUS!" as he did so.

He didn't know. He couldn't tell from knowing the twins, that that was the worst thing to do. He didn't know about the foster homes. He didn't know about some of the horrible things that had been done to the twins whilst they were in there. How could he? They never spoke about it.

Therefore what happened next was a complete surprise. Koko whirled in place, braids tightening as his hair frizzed right up into tight, tight curls. His pupils reduced to paper-thin slits. Half a word spilled out of his mouth in a scream, and the following gasp stopped up in his throat in a horrible strangling noise. Koko trembled from toe to tip, tears gathering in his eyes. He could not breathe in. All that happened was another squawk as he tried to breathe in through a throat already closed by panic.

Lulu was already at his side, calling his name and asking him a question that didn't make sense. "Tell me five things you see, Koko. Five things..." It didn't seem to be working.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it," said Magnus. "I was tryin'a have some fun, I didn't mean it."

Squawk, squawk, squawk. Tears fell from the amber eye, then the green one. Trembling hands fluttered near his head. Whatever Koko was seeing, it wasn't Magnus.

Magnus almost felt the looming shadow of Elrestle Kalen, about to beat him up. Or one of his old foster dads, about to teach him a lesson. They weren't real. They weren't here. The difference was that Koko couldn't tell the difference, right now. "What do I do?"

Lulu made him stand nearby. "Stay here. I'm'a get his meds from the nurse's office." Lulu took off at her top run.

This was the cue for the school Blobs to show themselves and attempt to assert dominance.

Greg -Magnus wasn't allowed to say the middle word- Grimaldis and the four Jerries. Jerry Cooper, Jerie Cartwright, Gerry Fuller, and "Little" Gerry Kulner. Though "Little" Gerry was the shortest of the crew, he still had a foot and a half over Koko and was easily four times his weight.

Magnus was younger, scrawnier, and had less muscle mass than any of them. That didn't stop him. He wasn't going to let Greg Grimaldis and the Jerries hurt Koko. He put himself between Koko and the Blobs. "Don't try anything," he said. "A teacher is coming."

"I don't see no teachers," said Grimaldis.

"Yeah, there ain't no teachers here," said "Little" Gerry.

"We ain't doing nothing to you," said Jerie.

"Yeah we ain't doing nothing," echoed "Little" Gerry.

"Good," said Magnus. "Let's keep it that way."

Gerry said, "Aw, you shouldn'a said that."

"Little" Gerry provided an agreeing echo for the gang.

"Can't let him talk like that to us," said Jerry.

"Gotta teach 'im a lesson," said Jerie.

Magnus kept a defensive posture. These mooks weren't nearly as scary as any of his old foster dads. He could do this.

* * *

 

Johaan answererd the phone. "Burnsides residence. 'Sup?"

"Mr Burnsides, this is Ms Mellit from Miller Academy, there's been an incident involving your son..."

On one hand - oh shit. On the other... wow, that took him a while.

The next thing he knew, he was on the stone to Avi and watching the school cleric run a few Healing Words over his injured little boy. That kid had had his ass kicked three ways to Sunday.

"Is he okay?" asked Avi.

"Hey, little man, you okay?" Johaan held the stone close so Avi could hear their boy.

"It hurts," said Magnus, "but I kept 'em off'a Koko, so I'm taking that win."

The hell? Sno, somewhere in the background, started demanding to know what the hell had happened to Koko.

"Panic attack," said the school Cleric. "He's had his medication, his guardian's been called and he's in the soft room with his sister." It was not, technically, the right thing to say, because Snocoun Ton was only technically the twins' sister... but she was also a trusted guardian and an officer involved in their case, so the rules were allowed to be bent.

There was going to be a fiasco. Johaan could feel it. La'ming Ton would be rushing in from work, in one uniform or the other, Avi would be rushing in to see what was the matter with their boy... and Snocoun Ton would be rushing in to deliver a swift serving of justice towards whoever had started this malarky. The schoolyard rumour mill would be going berserk before all parties had arrived on the scene.

La'ming was dressed in her shitty Garfield costume, though the hood was down and some of the snaps unfastened. "I'mhereformybabieswherearethey, aretheyokay?"

The chaos was just beginning.

* * *

 

Did you hear? The police came to the school!

They were wearing all their riot gear (translated, they were still in their flak vests because they'd not changed from leaving a hostile situation).

There were twenty of them (translated: there were two of them)!

They came for Greg Grimaldis and all the Jerries, and they're going to jail for sure (translated: Officer Ton gave them a stern lecture that was enough to frighten them onto the path of righteousness.)

The Blobs were so scared, there was pee  _everywhere!_  (translated: some seats were wet when Officer Ton mentioned that Grimaldis and the Jerries were old enough to be tried and sentenced as adults)

Someone must have  _died!_  (translated: nobody had died. It wasn't even a close thing)

The Blobs turned that Burnsides kid into hamburger... he went to hospital and had to get his  _face_  sewn back on. (translated: With a competent Cleric, most of the injuries were healed and the rest got better after a long rest)

The Blobs have been thrown out of the school for the rest of their  _lives!_  (translated: They have been punished by a two-week suspension in which their collective parentals are expected to give them some solid lessons about the justice system.

You know Koko? One of the twins? He's really sick 'cause of something the Blobs did. He had to go into hospital and have a machine help him even  _breathe._  (translated: Koko had some lung trouble until the meds kicked in and he calmed enough down for his throat to open up)

Those Blobs are in super trouble, now. (true)

The rumours could only get worse during the weekend, and would take the better part of a year to definitively deny. 


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Barry Bluejeans in Little Domesticity 'Verse: Adult or kid? This question has been in my mind ever since I started reading it. (And yes, you may answer this at AO3 if you like)

Every intelligent being has milestones of development. Humans have the Terrible Twos, when babies learn that the word ‘no’ has power that they can weild. Elves... have the Turbulent Twenties, when a young Elf learns about the different paces that others, and how very, very long Elven lives are by comparison.

It’s an upsetting time for many young Elves. No less so for Lulu and Koko, who left the standard avenues of education for exclusively Elven ones at the tender age of twenty-five.

Magnus, their best friend and partner in crime, was going to college and spending his free moments talking about some girl named Julia. Hee was making plans for the rest of his life.

...it was depressing as hell for Koko to realise that he had like eighty years left if he was lucky. He was slowly gravitating away from the Scene Look and towards a lot of black and a lot of smoky-eye makeup when he and his twin were selected for special tutoring.

Not only because they were Elves, and had to take their education at a slower pace, but also because they tested high and showed signs of true genius. Their mom was appropriately proud, but... Koko approached the special classes with morbid hostility.

Especially when it turned out that they were going to be taught by a Humanman.

Professor Hallwinter was a stout man, not fat, but definitely stout. He had some muscle under his seemingly permanent blue jeans. He was fresh-faced for a Human, which meant that he was younger than the twins. Except... developmentally... he was miles ahead of them. Humanmen were grown-ass adults at twenty. Elves... were closer to children than adults.

He looked over to Lulu as Hallwinter stammered his way nervously through a formal Elven greeting and an introductory speech about the expected curriculum.

He knew that dreamy look.

He’d had it once before, whenever he looked at...  _him._

Koko fought to keep him mind on the lessons, the how and why of experimental spell forms. It was difficult with Lulu at the neighbouring desk focussing exclusively on whatever she found attractive about the dude.

He made it all the way to first break, then pulled his sister aside and said, “You know it can’t work, right?”

“What?” she demanded.

“You and Barry Bluejeans. One - he’s your  _teacher._  You really shouldn’t be making sweet with a teacher... Two - he’s a twenty-year-old  _Humanman._  By the time you’re an adult, he’ll be  _dying of old age...”_

Lulu punched him. “Just because  _you_  had a bad time doesn’t mean you have to share it with everyone else, goofus. Gods! Lemme have a  _daydream.”_

Koko boggled. “How? You know Humanmen never last. Shit, I’ve been counting the days until that asshole fucking  _dies_  since age sixteen.”

Now she shoved him, tears in the corners of her eyes. “WHY DO YOU HAVE TO  _RUIN_  THINGS?”

“I’m not tryin’a ruin nothin’. I’m tryin’a save you from breaking your heart...” He could feel the weight of it crushing his own. He could see his sister mourning a love that could never happen. He could see Magnus’ eventual grave. He knew... he just  _knew..._  he’d live to see the ends of everyone he loved. Avi and Johaan and Magnus and Angus and Agatha and even baby Agnes, and all the Montlings and old Merle from the Bodega and...

Tears were ruining his eyeliner. Everything hurt. The whole world hurt. “It’s not fair,” he complained. “This whole thing isn’t fair. Why do some people only got eighty... or less... and Elves live to like eight hundred...  _Why?”_

The hurt he had never wanted to pass along reached Lulu’s mismatched eyes, too. “Oh, Koko...”

Then Barold ruined it even more by asking, “Hey, are you kids okay?”

Kids. They were just kids. Kids who would live to see their whole world die.

It wasn’t fair.

Something had to be done.

Between one week’s advanced class in magic theory and the next, Koko went budget Goth. He stopped buying the bright, holographic, glittery stuff and went for cheap and black. When he re-coloured his hair, he coloured it a simple black. A common colour from the bargain bins. He bought discount eyeliner and eyeshadow. Common black. One by one, the less than robust Scene clothes vanished from his wardrobe.

Every other spare scrap of money he had went into his studies. Research into obscure and ancient magics. Throwing himself into finding out what had happened to give Elves such a huge lifespan when so many others just... missed out.

He found an answer in legend. After four years of solid effort. Lulu was still crushing hard on a teacher she would inevitably outlive. Barold was headed inevitably towards the age where he would find someone to marry and then have babies with.

Magnus had already married Julia - a woman large enough and muscular enough to bench press him without breaking a sweat - and  _they_  were talking about raising their own babies.

Even Baby Agnes was growing up. Flirting at people and getting into fashion and... No. It wasn’t allowed to happen.

Koko put it all together. The legend, the spell... all he needed was the right thing to sacrifice. Something that would last forever. Something that would feed itself. Something he wouldn’t need.

Well. He knew one thing that he would never need to use again. One traitor emotion that had hurt him too hard and he’d sworn off ever using again.

He could sacrifice his heart so that his sister’s would never be broken. It felt... almost poetic. Noble. Perfect.

Now all he had to do was gather the spell ingredients...


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Barry Bluejeans in Little Domesticity 'Verse: Adult or kid? This question has been in my mind ever since I started reading it. (And yes, you may answer this at AO3 if you like)

Every intelligent being has milestones of development. Humans have the Terrible Twos, when babies learn that the word ‘no’ has power that they can weild. Elves... have the Turbulent Twenties, when a young Elf learns about the different paces that others, and how very, very long Elven lives are by comparison.

It’s an upsetting time for many young Elves. No less so for Lulu and Koko, who left the standard avenues of education for exclusively Elven ones at the tender age of twenty-five.

Magnus, their best friend and partner in crime, was going to college and spending his free moments talking about some girl named Julia. Hee was making plans for the rest of his life.

...it was depressing as hell for Koko to realise that he had like eighty years left if he was lucky. He was slowly gravitating away from the Scene Look and towards a lot of black and a lot of smoky-eye makeup when he and his twin were selected for special tutoring.

Not only because they were Elves, and had to take their education at a slower pace, but also because they tested high and showed signs of true genius. Their mom was appropriately proud, but... Koko approached the special classes with morbid hostility.

Especially when it turned out that they were going to be taught by a Humanman.

Professor Hallwinter was a stout man, not fat, but definitely stout. He had some muscle under his seemingly permanent blue jeans. He was fresh-faced for a Human, which meant that he was younger than the twins. Except... developmentally... he was miles ahead of them. Humanmen were grown-ass adults at twenty. Elves... were closer to children than adults.

He looked over to Lulu as Hallwinter stammered his way nervously through a formal Elven greeting and an introductory speech about the expected curriculum.

He knew that dreamy look.

He’d had it once before, whenever he looked at...  _him._

Koko fought to keep him mind on the lessons, the how and why of experimental spell forms. It was difficult with Lulu at the neighbouring desk focussing exclusively on whatever she found attractive about the dude.

He made it all the way to first break, then pulled his sister aside and said, “You know it can’t work, right?”

“What?” she demanded.

“You and Barry Bluejeans. One - he’s your  _teacher._  You really shouldn’t be making sweet with a teacher... Two - he’s a twenty-year-old  _Humanman._  By the time you’re an adult, he’ll be  _dying of old age...”_

Lulu punched him. “Just because  _you_  had a bad time doesn’t mean you have to share it with everyone else, goofus. Gods! Lemme have a  _daydream.”_

Koko boggled. “How? You know Humanmen never last. Shit, I’ve been counting the days until that asshole fucking  _dies_  since age sixteen.”

Now she shoved him, tears in the corners of her eyes. “WHY DO YOU HAVE TO  _RUIN_  THINGS?”

“I’m not tryin’a ruin nothin’. I’m tryin’a save you from breaking your heart...” He could feel the weight of it crushing his own. He could see his sister mourning a love that could never happen. He could see Magnus’ eventual grave. He knew... he just  _knew..._  he’d live to see the ends of everyone he loved. Avi and Johaan and Magnus and Angus and Agatha and even baby Agnes, and all the Montlings and old Merle from the Bodega and...

Tears were ruining his eyeliner. Everything hurt. The whole world hurt. “It’s not fair,” he complained. “This whole thing isn’t fair. Why do some people only got eighty... or less... and Elves live to like eight hundred...  _Why?”_

The hurt he had never wanted to pass along reached Lulu’s mismatched eyes, too. “Oh, Koko...”

Then Barold ruined it even more by asking, “Hey, are you kids okay?”

Kids. They were just kids. Kids who would live to see their whole world die.

It wasn’t fair.

Something had to be done.

Between one week’s advanced class in magic theory and the next, Koko went budget Goth. He stopped buying the bright, holographic, glittery stuff and went for cheap and black. When he re-coloured his hair, he coloured it a simple black. A common colour from the bargain bins. He bought discount eyeliner and eyeshadow. Common black. One by one, the less than robust Scene clothes vanished from his wardrobe.

Every other spare scrap of money he had went into his studies. Research into obscure and ancient magics. Throwing himself into finding out what had happened to give Elves such a huge lifespan when so many others just... missed out.

He found an answer in legend. After four years of solid effort. Lulu was still crushing hard on a teacher she would inevitably outlive. Barold was headed inevitably towards the age where he would find someone to marry and then have babies with.

Magnus had already married Julia - a woman large enough and muscular enough to bench press him without breaking a sweat - and  _they_  were talking about raising their own babies.

Even Baby Agnes was growing up. Flirting at people and getting into fashion and... No. It wasn’t allowed to happen.

Koko put it all together. The legend, the spell... all he needed was the right thing to sacrifice. Something that would last forever. Something that would feed itself. Something he wouldn’t need.

Well. He knew one thing that he would never need to use again. One traitor emotion that had hurt him too hard and he’d sworn off ever using again.

He could sacrifice his heart so that his sister’s would never be broken. It felt... almost poetic. Noble. Perfect.

Now all he had to do was gather the spell ingredients...


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Can we see Merle being cool about Ming's job vs some random incel?

It was so late it was early. Merle didn’t mind so much. Late shift was always the interesting shift. He could sleep in the early morning when one of his employees took over. Some time in the afternoon, he’d ferry some homegrown pipeweeds to the dispensary down the road.

For now, though, he was watching customers in the liminal hours going about their business. Like La’ming Ton, fresh from a late-night shoot and looking rumpled from some hard effort as she traipsed through the aisles, filling in orders on a list written by her kids.

The one Merle was keeping his eye on was “Young”  _Jason_  Hakniid. A kid who should have got his act together a decade ago, and seemed to be living in an eternal puberty where he got all the breaks and none of the consequences. According to his mother, Susan, he was going to be an Internet star just as soon as someone gave him a break.

Merle figured he was more likely to gain fame as yet another ratbag who caused immense devastation to an entire group of people or tried to blow up a building, rather than finding stardom. For the moment, he was more concerned about the twenty-something Humanman brat helping himself to something he was never going to pay for.

La’ming didn’t notice, but  _Jason_  was creeping on her. So Merle got in his way. “Help you with something, there, son?”

Typical of his family,  _Jason_  decided to stir trouble. “You better watch that [SLUR], m’man. Dirty [CURSE] like that’ll rob you dry.”

“Seems pretty clean to me,” said Merle. “What makes her dirty to you?”

 _Jason_  laughed. “Are you kidding me? I browse through hours of porn starring her ass. She’s a filthy [OH BOY].”

“If your looking at her ass made her dirty, maybe you shouldn’t look at her ass,” said Merle. He held out a hand, “And I’ll be having those three phones you put in your pockets or I’m calling the cops.”

The phones came out and so did some interesting words to turn the air blue.

“You’re on tape, bucko,” said Merle, waddling back to the counter. “Find everything?”

“Finally,” said La’ming. “I never knew I was adopting gourmets when I took them in...” She ferried stuff up to the counter, adding a few things she’d added to her pockets, then checked all her pockets and her bag to be certain. “Yeah, that’s it.”

In the shelves,  _Jason_  was carrying on a mumbled diatribe about dirty women and whether or not they should be trusted with children.

“He has neither,” Merle whispered. “Ignore him.”

“Already done,” said La’ming. “Sometimes, I wish I could ignore the whole world when they find me out...”

“...mumblemumble shouldn’t act like a [WHOOPS] on the daily mumblemuttermumble...”

“You have a good night,” said Merle.

“Give my love to Mavis and Mookie.”

“..muttermutter give your love to everyone with two dollars, ya [CRIKEY] grumblegrowl...”

Possibly prompted by this, La’ming added a kiss to Merle’s growing bald spot before leaving for the remains of the evening.

 _Jason_  wasn’t far behind. “Frigid [GODS],” he rumbled.

“Empty your pockets and learn to tell the difference between sex workers, there, Junior. LIke, if you got the money, a [GODS] will hand over the honey.”

 _Jason_  went on a half-hour diatribe that boiled down to his bemoaning the fact that he never got near a lady’s anatomy, and all the pretty ones thought they were too good for any decent fellow.

“Show me a decent fellow,” said Merle. “You? You’re the next best thing to pond scum.”

Insert half an hour for the how-dare-you rant.

“I apologise to pond scum,” said Merle, ringing up the purchases. “You got no right to complain, pal. You’re paying her rent, you’re paying for her clothes, and you’re filling up her retirement fund. If she wasn’t doing what she’s doing, you’d have to find something  _else_  to do with your hands.”

Half-hour opinion about how he should ‘get some’ if he’s paying for everything, then.

“Pal. She doesn’t owe you jack. You choose to pay for what she makes. That’s the product. That’s your fair exchange. Anything else she does is her business.”

Of course, he had another opinion in regards as to women going for assholes rather than decent folk.

“Son,” said Merle, “if that were true, you wouldn’t  _need_  the porn.”

“I’m never shopping here again!”

Merle wished him a good evening. Then muttered, “I wish you wouldn’t...”


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ContentWithDiscontent on Chapter 25 of A Little Domesticity
> 
>  
> 
> ...I'd imagine Magnus would be very good at being Loud and providing a pretty good Distraction while the terror twins are unnoticed and Suspiciously Silent sneaking away to do something they've not been told not to do outright but they Know they should probably not do  
>  Maybe something involving forbidden processed sugars

Is there anything more appealing than forbidden fruit? Lulu and Koko, aged eleven, couldn't find it. They _had_ found a large jar of brightly-coloured lollipops hidden away in a high cupboard, behind some bags of rice and rolled oats. Every single one of them was stamped on its wrapper with an image of an infant Humanman and a young Elf. Both with a red bar through their cartoon faces. The age limit for Humanmen was zero to three. The age limit for Elves was zero to one hundred.

For Lulu and Koko, this was yet another species-specific injustice.

Everyone else got to taste sugar before their majority. Elves... did not. Everyone said young Elves shouldn't have processed sugar, and numerous products bore that Elven symbol and a multitude of vendors refused to sell those things to the twins.

It simply wasn't fair.

Koko explained it logically and rationally to Mags, who also wanted one of the lollipops in Mukaara's hidden stash. Lulu was the one who came up with The Plan.

"We need twenty minutes, sugar," said Lulu. "That'll give us enough time to get in, get the goods, and get out without being detected."

"Then we can all enjoy a little treat," cooed Koko.

Magnus had his doubts. "I heard sugar was super-dangerous for underaged Elves."

"Pfft," dismissed Lulu. "They only say that 'cause of how they don't want us getting cavities before we're fully grown."

"You'd think we didn't get four sets of teeth[1]," added Koko.

"All you need to worry about is how to keep Mukaara occupied for twenty minutes," said Lulu. "We'll do the rest."

* * *

 

Twenty minutes and a very extended mashup of _Henry the Eighth, Be Kind to Your Web-footed Friends, Baby Shark,_ and _The Song that Never Ends_ (replete with improvised musical accompaniment) later...

They gleamed like gems. Red. Blue. Orange. None of those colours were ever found in nature.

"You did the hard part," said Lulu. "You get first pick. Koko held me so I could reach, so he gets next."

Mags picked the orange one. Koko took the red. Lulu got the blue.

"You sure you guys are going to be okay?" asked Magnus.

"It's one lollipop, dingus. What hurt could it have?"

Those were Koko's last rational words for twenty-four hours. Crinkle, went the cellophane as it flexed under their fingers. Rip, went the little tearaway strip that made unwrapping a breeze. Lick, went three tongues against three forbidden treats. Frizz, went two sets of golden hair as rationality died in the twins' mismatched eyes.

"So where have you two--" said Mukaara as he found the three of them. "Oh no... Oh. No."

There was an explosion of magic, and things only got worse from there.

* * *

 

It took a SWAT team, four Kettle teams, three tranquilliser darts each, and a fifteenth-level Hold Person spell to stop the twins from their rampage. A mixture of processed sugar and polyputthekettleon-level food additives had the two junior Elves completely out of their fluffy little gourds. They were, in fact, still tied up in Tanglenets when La'ming Ton, semi-legal guardian, entered the Scene. Magnus Burnsides, seven-year-old criminal, was weeping from the relative safety of an emergency blanket. Mukaara was trying to explain things to the constabulary. Several SWAT team members were patching up their wounds.

Some of them were bites.

Avi Burnsides, entering the Scene behind La'ming, said, "What. _Happened?"_

"I didn't mean it," said Magnus. Kid shorthand for, _I didn't mean for this to happen the way it happened._

La'ming checked on her beautiful babies. They were foaming strange colours at the mouth. Koko had pinkish foam at the corners of his mouth. Lulu's was blue-ish. Their pupils were painfully wide. Their breaths painfully short. They could both still move their heads, and twitched them about towards every noise. Their golden hair was in a tight 'fro, clouding around their heads like an obscene parody of a halo.

"Mrrrah," said Lulu. "Mrrh?"

Koko kind of gurgled.

"Oh, my babies," she sighed. She knew exactly what had happened. The oddly-coloured foam. Those symptoms. "Magnus Burnsides, did you help Lulu and Koko get hold of _sugar_ sweets?"

"I only ran distraction," he said. "They said it was okay. They said that one wouldn't hurt. They said they'd be fine..."

"Oh, little man..." sighed Avi.

"Please don't be mad at me?" Magnus snivelled.

"I'm not mad," said Avi. "I'm... disappointed."

Fat tears rolled down Magnus' cheeks as his bottom lip trembled.

La'ming left son to father and took a perch near her twins.

The attending cleric had some insulin, and was calculating the proper dose. "Don't touch," she advised. "They bite."

"They've bitten me before," said La'ming. Years ago, now. After a bad set of nightmares. When they didn't know who she was.

Lulu and Koko twitched under her hands, but inhaled her scent and relaxed a little. Well. They stopped struggling and breathed just a little bit deeper. They still maintained their distress purrs, La'ming could feel the subtle vibrations. She tld them, "It's going to be okay," even though she doubted they could hear her.

The needles went in with their doses. In minutes, the symptoms started to fade. Pupils shrank. Hair unfurled. Breaths deepened. Tears formed and fell.

"We thought we'd be okay," said Lulu.

"We thought all that stuff about sugar being bad was bunk," said Koko.

"Are you mad at us?" they chorused. Kid code for, _Are we getting thrown away?_ in their case.

They were already getting drowsy, thanks to the sugar crash. "I'll be mad at you tomorrow, when you can appreciate it." By tomorrow, they'd be out of danger. Back to normal, if hung over. An overnight in the hospital followed by a comprehensive lecture on what processed sugar did to little Elven bodies should be enough to keep them away from the stuff for another eighty-nine years or even more. La'ming hoped for more.

Avi carried Magnus home, sobbing, in his arms.

La'ming wouldn't get such a privilege until the next morning.

* * *

 

Magnus' hands gripped tighter to his chair when he heard Dad come home. This was it. This was the thing he'd been terrified of all afternoon. This was the moment he'd wind up in the doghouse or worse. They had a pigeon cage up on the roof garden. They'd exile him up there for sure. He was no longer fit to be in civilised company. He knew that with an unbreakable certainty.

He'd been too scared to eat. He'd been too scared to do anything. He just sat there, on the hard kitchen chair. Waiting for the inevitable.

"...been just sitting there since I got him home," said Papa.

Dad put away his work stuff and knelt into Magnus' vision, which blurred with tears. "I hear you made some bad choices, kiddo."

Maybe it was the gentle tone of his voice. Maybe it was the caring and gentle way he did it. Maybe it was the kind and careful hand on his own. Whatever it was, Magnus broke, bursting into inconsolable tears because this was _the end_ and it was all his fault... They were going to throw him out and make him sleep in the pigeon pen and they'd never hug him or cook for him or care about him ever again. Lulu and Koko were _in hospital_ and it was all his fault and he didn't mean for it to happen like that, he thought he was just being nice and they said it was okay and please, _please_ don't be mad, he didn't mean it...

He came out of the cry sandwiched between his dads. They were swaying gently and making soothing noises and still hugging him and still caring about him and Magnus didn't have the tears in him to howl about that.

"Everyone makes that mistake, sweetie," said Dad. "It's kind'a one of the hazards of life. Some people do it 'cause they think it'll be funny. Some just don't understand. You? You were trying to be sure your friends didn't miss out."

Papa said, "You're a kind kid, slugger," and ruffled his hair. "Lulu and Koko are going to be fine. The hospital stay is just for observation. Making sure they don't get into any more trouble."

Sniff. "I'm... I'm not getting thrown out?"

"Never," Dad smooched his cheek. "You learned from this, didn't you?"

"Yeah," he managed, voice hoarse from all the tears. "I'm never letting Lulu and Koko have sugar again, I promise." He made an X over his heart with a finger.

"That's all we wanted," said Papa. "Think you can have a little dinner, now? We made hamburger casserole..."

Actually... now that they mentioned it... Magnus was feeling mighty hungry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] I just made that up, but when you think of it, a being that lives for 750 years would need more than typical Human-type dentin.


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> AFTERNATH OF KOKOS SPELL PLEASE

_You can’t pay for your heart’s desire with your heart._  -- Lois McMaster Bujold.

Sunlight peeked through the rainclouds, but it was the rain that made Koko aware that he’d survived the spellcasting process. His hand hurt from the bloodletting, and the concrete of the roof had sucked all the body heat out of him. Not the most comfortable sleeping surface.

He sat up, and saw that the sigil he’d drawn in blood and chalk was still steaming a black vapour where the chalk and blood had crossed. It had worked. Every being connected by love would have the same lifespan as an Elf.

Neat.

Maybe.

The spell gave the signs it was supposed to, but he had no actual way to tell if it had worked, despite watching his best Humanman friend age into decay before Koko could legally marry any given sweetheart.

Okay. So that thought didn’t hurt like it usually did. That was... a sign.

It was a sign that the sacrifice was taken, anyway.

He crept back down the fire escape and into the bedroom he shared with Lulu. She was already awake and working on something for Elf Practice. She saw him in her mirror and turned. He saw it in an instant. Her worry. Her fear. Her concern.

None of it made an impact on Koko.

“So what were you out doing?”

“Just an experiment. Dunno if it worked,” he said. He felt no need to conceal the truth from her. His fear about that was gone. “Got into some interesting dark magic, but... There’s nothing to show for it yet.”

Lulu sighed. “You shouldn’t go to classes, today. You got blight on your neck. And... don’t joke about dark magic? It’s not a good goof. That shit’s hella dangerous.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Barry Bluejeans says this. Barry Bluejeans says that. Blah, blah, blah. He’s not gonna last.” Last night, words like that would have stabbed him, through and through, with pre-emptive sympathetic sorrow for his sister. None of that was there now.

“Crass, Koko. Knock it off. Get some rest. Gods.” Some Elves hit their Turbulent Twenties by going edgelord and dark, like Koko had. Lulu met hers with a relentless determination to enjoy every possible instant. Her clothing was bright and shiny and edging towards fluffy glitter princess. Her wardrobe was almost garish. Anything that glittered. Anything that shone brighter than it should. Anything, in brief, that was ultra girly.

Koko, deep into edgelord territory thanks to that asshole Sazed, had an entire wardrobe of blacks and very, very dark greys.

Lulu kissed him as he tucked himself in. It felt like living meat touching living meat. “Just look after yourself, okay?”

“...no reason not to,” he mumbled.

* * *

 

The news that everyone could live eight hundred years didn’t spread. Koko was the only one who knew it for weeks. Months. Then little things started happening.

Humanmen on the brink of death, especially dying of old age, started to rally. Started to regain some of their vigour. Humanman children started ‘Slowing down’ as they approached their twenties.

Baby Agnes, now nineteen, was complaining that she’d be an inch shorter than her mother ‘forever’. The twins Ambrose and Aloicious were also complaining that they weren’t growing up as fast as they should be.

They had no idea.

Koko didn’t see any reason to tell them. He didn’t have any real reason to do anything, really. His ability to care about doing stuff vanished with his ability to love. Now... he did things because it was easier than not doing them. He ate, washed, and dressed because it was easier than giving Mom and Lulu a fight about it. He went to Elf classes because it was less hassle than not going. He spoke up about what Sazed did to him because it was less bother than letting that scumbag out on the streets.

He did, however, stop dying his hair. Stopped cutting it, too. It was less bother to do nothing with it than maintain a look. He stopped wearing makeup, too. Stopped giving a shit about the hands-off aura he had once worked so hard to maintain.

He couldn’t care, anymore.

He had nothing left to care with. Emotion was just... out of his reach.

Sure, he could hang out and talk and do all the other things. Pretend to be someone who gave a shit. It was all a farce. He could be friends with Magnus and share jokes with the Pithons and do all the neighbour stuff and even taunt Bluejeans, but...

He was a shell.

A fake, outward play at being normal. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like... nothing and nobody mattered. It was a big old void, and everyone around him was just...

Talking dust.

Everyone was going to live, just like he wanted. His sister could laugh and love and enjoy the company of Bluejeans for as long as she liked, and that... that had been so important, once.

Now?

He couldn’t connect with why.

Every time he tried to feel, all he could reach was... static. Emotional static. Like his heart was just a muscle to move his blood around and keep his brain alive and that was it. He let it. It was less fuss than the alternatives.

Nevertheless, he kept looking over edges, whenever he was near. Like it would be so easy to go over them and, after a brief moment of pain, never be anything ever again.

He always had stuff to do. Arrangements to make. Appointments to keep.

...miles to go before he could sleep...

Besides, he had to live a long life to be certain the spell stuck. If he died of old age at seven hundred and fifty plus, so would the rest of the entire dang world. No further consequences, because love kept growing and spreading. It was just him in a living hell and that was fair.

He suffered, so no-one else would have to.

It was one morning like any other. The sun was turning the sky some neon colours and Koko was idly watching the river from on top of the bridge. Wondering if the spell was truly worth it. If it really would unravel if he stepped off the edge. If it was really worth going to that party like he promised.

Some stranger approached. Tall, elegantly sartorial. Koko would have lusted after him, once upon a time, but his lusting days were over.

“Oi beg yer pardon, young sir,” he said in a ludicrously fake cockney accent.

“Post office is straight down that way,” Koko pointed, “and then hang a left at Nonesuch Street. Can’t miss it.”

“Sorry, Oi’m not lookin’ fer the post office. I want to ask you about somefin you did...”

Koko glared at him. “If it’s about that fucking photo of me sweeping the street, you aughta know that the scumbag who took it is guilty of sexual assault on a minor. I’m the fucking minor.”

“Actually, I’m trying to track down someone who’s violated the laws of the Raven Queen,” he said.

“Necromancy? In this day and age? I didn’t know there was a death police, m’man.” Actually, tracking down death criminals sounded like something vaguely interesting. “Is the horrible accent part of the job description, handsome? ‘Cause that might be a deal-breaker.”

He had a nice laugh. “I know you’re the sacrifice, Koko Taaco-Ton. What I need to know is... was it forced? Or was it voluntary?”


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> Sno vs the raven queen from Koko’s spell

She was clad all in black from tip to toe. Most was a black so dark that it was nearly impossible to tell shape and form within it. She wore a white porcelain mask with a carmine bow of painted lips. She was unreal. She was real. She was the goddess to whom all must answer.

She was Death.

She was not taking her sibling if Sno could fucking help it.

“You can’t take him,” she argued. “He’s not dead.”

The thing that looked like a woman tilted that unearthly pale mask that could have been her face. “He is close,” she whispered. The spectre of Death never has to shout. It has never needed to. “He lives... only because it is too much bother to die.”

“True,” said Koko, held safe in her arms.

“You’re not helping, baby bro,” said Sno. “We’re fighting for your life, here.”

The man known as Kravitz, lately revealed as a Reaper stood between them. “My Queen. Please. He has paid enough and more than enough for what he has wrought. What would taking him to the Eternal Stockade remedy?”

“He has disrupted the flow of life and death,” she whispered.

“Rearranged,” said Koko. “I rearranged it.”

The white mask turned. Its empty eye holes failed to intimidate. “You. Dare?” she whispered.

“Yeah. You got it wrong, there, birdie.” Only someone who had no emotion could dare talk to the Raven Queen like that. He could not fear because he had no love left. Not for his life, not for anyone else’s. “I rearranged the flow. Like. Weirs, dams, and canals kind’a thing. Listen. Everyone alive still has the chance to donk things up so bad they beef it. Meanwhile, if they look after themselves, they could live as long as an Elf. It’s not immortality. It’s... It’s making everyone’s race the same distance.”

The living shadow moved, and Sno flinched him away. “He’s only thirty. He’s practically a baby! If you take him before he dies, you’re just as bad a criminal as you say he is!” Sno took out her wand. She’d seen what had happened to all the others who tried to use their powers to fight the Raven Queen, but she took it out anyway. If this bitch was going to take Koko, it was going to be over her dead body. “Back. Off.”

“Why’re you even fighting for me?” said Koko. “It’s not like I could ever be happy anyway...”

_There was the sound of knitting needles..._

Another figure was present in this space. A figure of veils and rainbows and eternally clicking needles that ravelled together the threads of fate. If she had eyes, none could focus on them, yet she saw all.

“Do not snap this thread, Raven. My weave has changed. So many paths are altered. He is the crux.”

Those who were conscious there all said, “What?” in turn. That included the Raven Queen.

“He has forestalled the end of the world. He has reversed the path of the great ruin. We must help this child.”

“What?” said Koko.

The bristle of onyx feathers around the Raven Queen’s collar flattened and the gigantic shadow shrank. “You claim him as yours?”

“I do,” said Istus.

“Then we shall see the echo of the wound in his soul,” whispered the Raven Queen. “We shall see what can be done... to heal it.”

Sno still had her wand aimed at the black figure. “You hurt him, I kill you.”

“You... may certainly try...” She had long, black talons instead of hands. “I will not harm him. I will not take him. You have... my promise.”

Istus said, “I shall keep him safe.”

Of the two, Sno trusted Istus a little more. She lowered her wand, and relaxed her guard on Koko. The kid remained where he was, as apathetic as he had been for five entire years.

Threads sprang out of both Istus’ knitting and Koko’s body. Beautiful things of every hue, in a tangle that was impossible to follow with a mortal eye. Long black talon and elegant finger both traced the knots. A discussion occurred in a language Sno could not comprehend.

They were... bickering? It was certainly an animated huddle. Fingers pointed to one crucial spot, just as Lulu recovered enough to shakily sit up. Istus summoned something that looked almost like a crochet hook and made a few deft moves.

“What’re you doing to my baby brother?”

The threads returned to their origin point. Koko was weeping. “Lulu... Lulu, you’re okay?”

Lulu launched herself at him. “You’re back! You’re back, I can feel it! You’re back...”

“I’m back,” he said. “But... the spell? Did you break it?”

“No,” whispered the Raven Queen. “Your work is intact.”

“All I did was stop the source now that it’s no longer needed,” said Istus. “Mortals. You all think it’s all or nothing with things. Don’t. Remember that you need to stop and breathe.”

Kravitz was murmuring in the Raven Queen’s ear. Or maybe the side of her head. It was hard to tell. “Yes,” she breathed. “You have not had any time for yourself... you may go, though I may call on you if I have need.”

Koko breathed. Shaky, uneven breaths. Loaded with emotion. His mismatched eyes were heavy with tears. His face didn’t know what to do. “Mom... Mama... Mags... Everyone... Is everyone okay?”

Sno almost crushed him in her hug. Lulu was right. He was back. Back to the sensitive, caring, loving kid he had been when he became so upset with mortality that he wanted to change the entire world.

Sno had never been so happy to have that Koko back.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DeathsKitten on Chapter 22:  
> Ooooooh! You KNOW all is faithful readers are all over this! Could you please write more of this story? Pretty please?

Koko couldn't find a metaphor accurate enough to describe having his emotions back after a five-year stretch without them. It was... It was a sudden plunge into ice-cold water after a hot day. It was an equally surprising hot bath. It was sensation returning to a limb that had had the circulation cut off. It was breathing clean air after being immersed in the toxic cloud of a million smokers. It was seeing a rainbow. It was watching the stars twinkle and knowing that it was caused by ripples in the atmosphere. It was looking up at a dinosaur skeleton for the first time. It was coaxing a small animal into your hands and having it sit there and trust you. It was snapping awake from a nightmare. It was realising that all was well, that you were safe, that your family was close. It was the stinging agony of a sunburn. It was the soft and gentle tickle of an evening breeze.

It was all of these and more.

Koko spent like two weeks in a pleasant haze, amazed and in awe. His heart was more than a muscle again. He could  _feel._  He could laugh, he could cry, he could rage, he could do it all. Though, more often than not, he found tears escaping his eyes. Happy ones, sad ones, angry ones. It didn't matter. His eyes were wont to leak, these days.

He chopped off the last of his dyed hair and started stealing Lulu's clothes until he got a little bit more of a varied wardrobe. Black was out for Koko. He'd had enough of it. Besides, black looked a hell of a lot better on the fellow down the road. Kravitz.

Koko didn't remember a great deal of the final confrontation, but he remembered Kravitz was pretty cool, and he was taking some time off to keep an eye on Koko. Make surer any further Dark Magic shenanigans didn't happen. He worked in the bookshop near the tutorials centre where the twins went every day for Elf Practice. Koko had glimpsed his locs or his night-dark skin moving around in there as he passed, and waved.

Today... today, he was going in.

Kravitz was very well-formed. Slightly taller than Koko, but Koko was getting used to being the short-ass. Barely. He was involved in rearranging some books on the shelves and stepped under a skylight.

_Holy shit, he's beautiful..._

That night-dark skin was iridescent, gleaming gold where the sunshine hit. Turning Kravitz from humanman-shaped shadow in a nice suit to a minor godling who enjoyed slumming with the mortals.

"Good morning," said Kravitz, sans his terrible cockney accent. "How can I help you?"

He was staring. He knew he was staring. He couldn't stop staring. He wished he could stop drooling like that.

Lulu shut his mouth with a finger. "My brother and I are looking for a copy of  _Venrathi's Transformative Runes and How to Use Them,"_  she said. "If it's in good condition, even better."

Koko was transfixed. Kravitz moved like a dancer. How had he not noticed before? He moved like a dancer and was so graceful and he wore  _cravats_  with a vest and oh gods, that was a skull-and-wing pattern in black-on-black and he had beautiful silver beads in his hair and...

Koko knew his heart was working for sure, because it was threatening to bust out of his ribcage. Because it was in his throat, stopping any words before they got out.

He had a little bird skull pin keeping his cravat in place, and little skull-and-crossbones cufflinks. Silver. Every piece of jewellery he had was silver. He was elegance incarnate. He was beauty turned flesh. He was...

He was asking a question!

"Huh?"  _Smooth move, ex-lax... now he thinks you're a moron._  "Sorry. My mind was elsewhere."

_"Like, right down his pants?"_  teased Lulu in  _Us._

He elbowed her. "Mind repeating that, handsome?"

"I said we got tenth edition and twelve point five. Which would you prefer?"

_You on a bed of lettuce. No! Can't say those words out loud..._  "Uhm..." his voice cracked as he tried to say even that much.

"Our tutor said to try and get tenth if we could," said Lulu. "That's the version he uses."

Kravitz bagged up two tenth editions of  _Venrathi's Transformative Runes and How to Use Them._  "Anything else?"

Koko was still staring.

Lulu whispered in his ear, "Gonna spend a decade before even talking to him like I did, goofus?"

Koko shouted, "WHEN DO YOU GET OFF I WANNA BUY YOU A COFFEE OR SOMETHING!"

Oh sweet Fantasy Jesus, he had perfect teeth. They shone like the sun. "We can meet up for coffee at five," he said. "I'm sure you have lots of questions I could help you with."

Lulu muttered in  _Us, "Yeah, like his inseam measurement..."_

Koko almost died from the vermillion fires of mortification.  _"Damnit Lulu... cut me a break..."_

_"No fuckin' way. I wanna have fun with this."_  Smiling, she paid the man and forcibly pushed Koko back onto the sidewalk. "See you at five, Ghost Rider."


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ContentWithDiscontent on Chapter 23 of Tumbl'd 3: Still TAZ:  
> What is going to h a p p e n to Taako and it is relieving that he's been healed (seriously where's a pair of depression-healing goddesses when you need them huh) but still I Need to Know what happens next

_What did you do there? - I got high_  
What did you feel there? - Well I cried  
But why the tears there? - I'll tell you why - yyyyy   
It's all too beautiful, It's all too beautiful  -- Itchycoo Park, by Small Faces

Two leaves of 'lion hadn't worked. Not really. Not when Kravitz turned up. Taako's eyes leaked a little, blurring an otherwise perfect view. Kravitz the golden godling. Kravitz the stunningly handsome. Kravitz the beautiful. Kravitz, who had taken care to be within a very few years of Koko's age.

Also, Kravitz the corpse, according to Lulu. She was probably lurking around, waiting to spoil everything at a choice moment. The thought made him pre-emptively depressed.

That was the trouble with his reinvigorated heart. It took things to extremes.

Kravitz smiled his perfect smile at Koko. A soft, gentle, wonderful, beautiful and above all  _natural_  smile that was more than a little goofy and Koko loved it. "Don't cry," he said.

"I keep tryin'a stop," said Koko. "It just happens..." Did he go for those elegant hands? Dare he embrace? Koko wanted to lunge at the man and suck face until he passed out, but... technically, they'd only recently met. "Um." Now he was blushing  _and_  crying. Shit.

"Still overwhelmed?" Those elegant hands twitched. Well. At least neither of them knew how much touching was okay.

"Yeah."

"Want to go somewhere a little more secluded?" he gestured towards an empty gazebo. Far enough away from people who might stare, but not so far as to be away from actual help if things went south. He was so considerate that Koko...

Koko wiped his face, and took yet another swig of water. "It wouldn't be so bad except I hardly ever stop crying. It's almost pathetic."

"I don't think it's pathetic. You... Koko, you've possibly been through too much for one intelligent being to bear. Being emotional is... it's a natural reaction."

Amazingly...  _that_  worked. Koko had a break in his personal weather. "Gods, you're amazing," he breathed.

Kravitz smiled as they took a seat in the sunshine, and Koko got a chance to admire that golden sheen on that sculpted flesh for a solid minute. Kravitz looked like he was admiring his view, too.

"So. Um. What is... this?" Koko gestured between them with a back-and-forth pointing finger. "Are you like my parole officer, counsellor... teacher? Or... what?"

"I'd like to be a friend, first," said Kravitz. "It's been a long time since I was in the world of the living for more than an appointment. It's been a long time since you've... felt whole. Perhaps we can help each other out."

Koko giggled and swept some of his hair behind his left ear. His right hand was creeping ever closer to Kravitz's left. Was that gold-touched hand as smooth as it looked?

He went for it.

Colder than ice! Colder than the grave, certainly. As cold as... As cold as...

"Oh boy," he shrank away, and hated himself for it. "Oh boy, that is a clammy one..."

Now Kravitz shrank away. "I'm... I'm sorry. It's... I'm not... I didn't..."

"No! No, you can't help it. I'm sorry. I didn't wanna hurt your feelings, but I guess I donked up there, huh?"

"I can forgive that," he said. Kravitz had a shy smile. "Koko... what you did was extremely dangerous. That spell? There were so many ways it could have failed. There are so many ways it could have consumed you. You must have done some research to get to that place, to that decision. Why? Why did you do it? You had to know it was dangerous."

Koko thought about it. This was defs not first date material. But if it meant more time in the company of this debilitatingly handsome man... "Figured, life was gonna shit on me anyway, so..." he stopped. No. Kravitz deserved the entire story. He took out his phone and found That Picture in one simple search.

_Angel with Street Broom._

He handed it over. "The man who took that knew I was sixteen. He knew I was too young for... adult stuff. But he told me I was beautiful and he said I seemed so mature and he wanted me to be his muse. He wanted me to be his model. He... he wanted some sick fucking stuff, at the end of it. I didn't see any of it coming. I didn't  _want_  to." Koko took the phone back, got rid of the image. "He's in jail for the rest of his life, now."

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," said Kravitz.

"So... we aged out of the mixed education part of school and start Elf Practice. Well. Advanced history and heritage with a focus on Elven lore, magic and shit... and one of our tutors... My sister..." He could say this better. "Lulu gets a crush on this Humanman who's her age. Like... major league crush. Like, in love five-ever crush. Hard knocks, balls to the wall, fucking..." the tears edged in. He wiped them away. "Humanmen don't last. Even though they're the same age? He's likely to die before she's legally able to marry him. I know Lulu. She-- She's a one-guy gal, you know? One love, for all of her life.  _All_  of her life."

Kravitz whistled backwards.

"Yeah. Every romance where there's a Humanman and an Elf? Fucking tragedy, every single time. I know she's into him, and he's... He blushes like a schoolkid every single time she flirts. It's embarrassing. It took her ten years to just... talk to him voluntarily. She has it hard for the dude. And... It wasn't fair. Lulu'd already been through enough getting a body that fits her. She didn't need this. So... I started doing my homework."

"None of the material stopped you?"

"Dude... I would do  _anything_  for my sister. I mean... I was already that kid in that picture. My life was already ruined. Hers... didn't have to be. I figured I'd never fall in love again, anyway, so. Yeah. I gave up my love so she could have hers. Fair trade, right?"

"Hardly fair, considering what it did to you."

"Worth it," Koko insisted. "She has him for the rest of her life. So he's a little wrinkled, so he's a little grey, she doesn't care. She'll match when they hit five hundred and something. Lulu's gonna be happy. Worth it."

"Even the years when you couldn't feel? Koko, when we met, you were contemplating a long trip off the short side of a bridge."

"I did that on the daily, m'man," shit. With his heart back, those words terrified him. "I always had other plans, though. Obligations. Errands. A day job... I was..." he couldn't say it. "I wasn't fine, was I?"

Kravitz shook his lovely head. "You were very far away from being fine."

Koko sighed. "I get that, now. I was in a bad fucking place. It sucks to just... endure... from day to day."

"I have to confess," said Kravitz. "I've done more than a little enduring myself. It doesn't hurt until after it's done."

Koko found the bravery to look up into those deep, dark, doe eyes. He didn't fall in, but it was a close thing. "Does it stop?"

"I don't know. I've only just started not enduring."

Whoah. One more thing they had in common. "We should both totally enjoy life, y'know?" he found himself blurting. "Carpe the fuck outta the diem b'fore we start dyin'."

"Sounds like a good philosophy. Where would you recommend we start?"

Koko thought about it. Ice cream was right out. Dude was already too cold. "I know a place that'll sell you doughnuts fresh outta the oil," he said. "Crisp and crunchy and almost dripping cinnamon and maple sugar..."  _And afterwards I can see how well it warmed your lips by testing them with mine..._

"Sounds like an experience," said Kravitz. "Lead the way."

* * *

 

 

Sitting on the other side of the pathway, breaking up a duck bun[1] for the avians in the pond, Sildar "Barry Bluejeans" Hallwinter watched a young couple stroll away from the gazebo. "I thought you were spying on your brother with a plan to fuck him up..."

"Look at him," dismissed Lulu. "He's already fucked up."

"And?" Barry prompted in that annoying teacher way he had.

"And he's not crying for a change. I figure he needs it."

"And?"

"And he's smiling."

"And?"

Now it was Lulu's turn to have the crimson tides of mortification flood her face. "Andhe'sbeenthroughtoomuchformeandtheentireworldandhedeservesabreak. OKAY?"

Barry flicked a morsel to a swan and watched the bird gobble up the peas and carrot shavings. "Well, okay," he allowed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Something like horse bread, but made for ducks.


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> Can we get LD Sno interrogating Krav. She’s not gonna let another Sazed happen. :P

“I think we can say the small heater is a winner,” said Koko’s new boy, Kravitz. He was apparently Human, but his species didn’t matter any more since The Big Spell. “The little skulls on my nails look amazing.”

Sno knew differently. Kravitz wasn’t Human. Not any more. Kravitz was an undead soldier for the Raven Queen, who used to be out after Koko’s ass. Which was why she was waiting in the stairwell, just out of Koko’s view. Definitely out of Kravitz’s, since he only had eyes for her adopted baby brother.

“Yeah, I can totes feel the difference,” said Koko. He must have been holding Kravtiz’s hand. “Do you really have to work? There’s this new pasta place that opened up a few blocks down. They serve wine to anyone over thirty...”

A small laugh, “Well, I do like wine,” he allowed. “I’ll take a rain check on the pasta place. Call you when I’m safe?”

“I’d love for you to do that,” cooed Koko.

They spent a few more minutes on pointless smalltalk. Obviously smitten. Then Kravitz finally started descending the stairs.

Sno pounced, blocking off his physical egress, even though she’d seen him tear portals in reality in order to get to the Astral Plane. “Kravitz,” she said. “A word?”

“I... kind of have an appointment,” he hedged.

“You put it off to make goo-goo eyes at Koko, you can put it off to answer one question.”

“Fair,” he said. “One question. Then I have to go.”

“What are your intentions with my baby brother?”

His face was an open book with large print and it said,  _Oh shit, it’s the Shovel Talk..._  and his dark face went slightly darker around the cheeks. “Um,” he said. “I know, we didn’t get off to the best start, but... there’s... there’s something extraordinary about Koko. I want... I want to make sure he’s okay. I want to see him happy. I want to make sure he’s got the good life if he deserves. I want... I want the best of everything for him.”

Yeah, he had it bad. It’d likely be more than a few years before he admitted it, though. “Even if that doesn’t include you?”

Sigh. “Yeah. Even if that doesn’t include me.” He touched his eye. stared in confusion at the wetness he found there. “Koko can tell me to fuck off any time he likes, but... he keeps asking me back.”

“He likes you. The last dude he liked... wasn’t nice.” A succinct and completely inaccurate summary of Sazed “that pedophilic bastard” Baker.

“I heard,” said Kravitz. “Nobody deserves someone like that happening to them. If I could, I’d... I’d join the queue.”

Sno stepped aside, letting Kravitz pass. “I know I can’t kill you, but if you hurt Koko, I’ll fucking die trying.”

“Ma’am? I’d rather kill  _myself_  than hurt Koko.”

Okay. That was a grudging pass.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 2]

[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for details on how to support this artist]


	35. Chapter 35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Can we see Avi throw Sno’s bachelorette party?

There are many names for it. The paddy wagon, the come-along cart, the chunderbox... Whatever it’s named, it’s usually used to haul masses prisoners to incarceration, and its use is mandatory in City Watch pre-nuptual parties. Stag night, hen night, bachelor parties, spinster parties... they have many names too.

Sno expected the SWAT gear, and the wagon, and the blindfold. She did not expect to emerge in a sort of picnic area and what looked like giant, colourful blocks. They suited her up in some armour and safety goggles. Half the precinct’s officers were wearing blue armbands. The other half were wearing red. She had a red armband.

Avi had a red one, too. It was the lower ranks against the higher brass. Including their captain.

Then he handed her a paintball gun and they all filed onto the range with the colourful blocks.

“You’re telling me that we’re to  _shoot at_  our commanding officer?” she said, seemingly appalled. “Avi, I couldn’t possibly - SNEAK ATTACK!”  _Pow, pow pow!_

The games were on. They were really more fun than they should have been.

The only worrying part was the gigantic cake lurking incongruously near the range. In plain view like the Eiffel Tower was in plain view in Paris. Avi had to have something planned, but she knew it wouldn’t happen until they had all finished shelling the living piss out of the senior brass.

It was more fun than should have been legal, and the Chief was all colours of the rainbow when they all staggered off the range to crack some cold ones.

Sno wasn’t far behind the rainbow parade, having got as good as she gave, but now that the safety goggles were off, her eyes kept drifting back towards the gigantic, fake cake.

Following that, and a wash and a change of clothes, it was back in the wagon for another blindfolded trip to somewhere far more intimate, with friends and family. Or so Avi said.

“I know you have something planned with that cake, Burnsides,” she managed, losing track of the turns they took. “It didn’t pop off at the range... what’s going on?”

Avi, annoyingly, said, “Spoilers.”

Sno stewed on that for all of five minutes before she said, “This is about the stunt I pulled for yours, isn’t it?”

“Spoilers...” This time, there was a breathy giggle underneath the noise of the engines.

The door opened to Koko in white tie and tails, “M’lady, this way to the extravaganza...” He offered his elbow and handed her down out of the wagon as if he were handing royalty out of their armoured car. He was the very image of picture perfect grace and style.

The facade of the place he was leading her into had a palatial feel, and there were other friends and family playing the roles of entourage for this part of her journey. Lulu became her personal assistant, and Sno was sure she spotted her Mom as one of the makeover assistants, but it was hard to tell because they kept blinding her with cucumber slices.

On one hand, the spa and makeover sesh was exactly what she needed to unwind after the looming cake on the range. On the other hand, she still had no idea what the hell Burnsides was up to.

They dressed her up in the frilliest, fanciest, faberge meringue of a Princess Dress, replete with enough bling to sink a barge. Gave her a few lessons on how to behave like a Princess, including how to walk in unfamiliar heels. Then they turned her into the Grand Banquet Hall for the “Suitor’s Ball.”

There were definitely a few Fantasy Chippendales in the mix. Orc, Dragonborn, Humanman, Elf, Tiefling... even an Aarakocra. All civil as hell when she danced to the orchestra’s tune. Yet, lurking in a corner off to the side of the buffet... there was that damned fake cake again. Sticking out like a baboon’s buttocks. Taunting her.

She almost didn’t notice Mukaara taking her hand.

“It’s not a proper Princess Experience without your Prince, right?” he said.

Well. At least he was going to share in the mortification when the inevitable happened. “You are my best nerd,” she whispered. “Where’s Mom and her -uh- ‘work friends’?”

“Being paparazzi?”

Utter confusion. “What?  _All_  of them?”

“Yahuh.”

Suspicion. “Where’s Burnsides?”

“Dancing with his grandkid on his feet. Why?”

“See the cake on your ten?”

Mukaara looked. “Oh shit. This is about the thing with the nuns, right?”

“Yeah. I thought he’d forgiven me, but... yeah.”

It was a mostly enjoyable night, if it wasn’t for that  _fucking_  cake, it would have been perfect. The glitter, the glamour, the chance to be as girly as she liked without judgement... Sno loved it.

She just couldn’t forget about the cake, though.

Burnsides, when she could catch a glance at him - or a murder glare at him - was loving every inch of the evening.

All good things still came to an end, with Magnus dragging Mukaara off for an overdue bucks’ night, and Sno catching a pumpkin-shaped carriage all the way back to her flat with an evilly-smirking partner in the other seat.

“Okay, Burnsides. What the fuck?”

“Revenge,” he said. “I had you dreading that cake all night, didn’t I?”

“Who was in there?”

“Nobody. It’s empty. A dummy. A blank.”

“YOU GOT ME ANXIOUS OVER A FUCKING BLANK CAKE?”

He laughed. “Revenge served cold, Nono-dear.”

“You know I’m gonna owe you big time for that.”

“True, but you can’t fault the artistry of it.”

She had to admit. He had her on that one. “This wedding better go off without a snag. And without a certain cake.”

“Aw, but Barry was gonna jump out of it for the Reception...”


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> Set forth a Lucas redemption arc in LD? Tear him down now and build him back up

The greatest news of Lucas’ life was that they were making a movie based on  _Fires in Elfington._  The worst news, when it arrived three months later, was that they were making it all  _live action._

There were several reasons not to do things like that. For a start, the casting was generally  _off_  from the animated originals, in more than merely possessing internal organs and working musculature. In this case, the producers chose an actress to play Syn’amon who was… decidedly more curvaceous than the ectomorphic animated model  _and_  her real-life counterpart - Officer Snocoun Ton of the Neverwinter Police Department.

Worse - they whitewashed as much as they could about literally everyone in the entire cast. Everyone was, where possible, as pale as possible. They cast a pale green, buxom Sea Elf as Syn’amon instead of getting a Beach Elf, and there  _were_  people who could tell the difference. They lightened up the Mischief Twins’ skin tones to paper-bag brown, and generally miscast the entire thing.

Lucas was in a foul mood by the time he got to the premier. Therefore, seeing a buxom Sea Elf parading around in a sexier version of Syn’amon’s default outfit was like a red flag to a bull. He was an important person in the STEM fields, damnit. He came here as a representative of the  _Fires_  fandom. He shouldn’t have to put up with this kind of misrepresentation.

“Hey, do you know who wrote the original episodes of  _Fires in Elfington,_  and what inspired them to do it?” he said.

The Sea Elf in costume was busy doing T&A poses for the flickering cameras.

“Do you know how many episodes that outfit featured in and why they were worn?” he demanded.

Still not a thing. The woman wrapped her arm around him and feigned a swoon.

“How about how many episodes were commissioned for the third extended season?” he snapped. “Do you know anything about  _Fires in Elfington_  like at all?”

Someone in Mue Sakka costume came out of the crowd. It was scary accurate and faithful to the anime. “Shiringami Tatonaka, a news story about Officer Snocoun Ton rescuing the young lady who’s now her daughter; thirty-seven in the original run and two hundred in the extended series; and twenty-five. Are you done geek checking my spouse now?”

The woman in costume said, “Dude, this is just my day job, okay? I didn’t need to pass a test to wear an outfit. Gods…” she let him go and posed with her wife. She shouted so the crowd could hear her. “This lovely woman made my outfit from scratch, using the fifty seconds of clear footage available in the first teaser. Isn’t she amazing? Take a bow, babe.”

Lucas raged. “That outfit isn’t at all true to the original anime! It’s an affront to the fandom! Productions like that and outfits like this should be banned from all gatherings! It isn’t fair to Tatonaka-san!”

The wife, a mousy brunette, wheeled on him. “It’s people like you who are an affront to fandom! Do you know how long it takes to draft a pattern from fifty seconds of footage? The number of times I had to go back and forth on the freeze-frames to take detailed notes? The best guesses I had to take? How about how long it takes to source material that looks and acts like the finished costume,  _before it’s sewn?_  How about how many stitches does it take to fake the veins and structure inside a skeleton leaf? Do you know what kind of wadding gives the right flexibility and resilience whilst also not developing a wrinkle memory? Do you know any of  _that,_  mister smarty-pants?”

A couple done up as the Mischief Twins were capering about in the background, barely visible in his peripheral vision. He didn’t care about them. He cared about his rights as the keeper of trivia. “I bet you don’t even know how many frames were involved in the famous science scene.”

“Foreground, background, or by plane?” challenged the wife. “Even if I told you, you’d claim I memorised it to impress you. News flash, assmunch, I’m actually  _KnowHaver98_  on your precious forum. I  _curate_  your precious trivia archives. And finally, nobody actually wants  _your_  attention, you greasy unwashed nerd.”

The woman playing Syn’amon pointed up, showing him that the Mischief Twins had created a gigantic, illusory sign above his head. It said,  _World’s Most Obnoxious Jackass,_  in bright, pink letters.

Lucas stormed away from that scene, retreating to the relative safety of the local Whinging Fanboy Corner, where a pocket echo chamber soothed his frazzled ego.

“Who does she think she is, parading around in that thing like a slut,” he grumbled.

“Uh. Sno’s mom?” said one of the crew.

Wait. What?

“You didn’t know that?” said a lieutenant.  _“You_  didn’t know that?”

“Man. I thought you knew  _everything_  about  _Fires in Elfington…”_

“What a traitor.”

Wow. That had to be rock bottom. Kicked out of his own group of loyal detail addicts. He staggered away from that scene, ordered a stiff drink, and took solace in the numbing effects of alcohol.

The glowing sign dissolved, eventually, and Lucas slunk into his appointed seat, prepared for the worst.

He got… something remarkably good. All the nasty rumours about the movie were just that. Big ol’ sacks of foul-smelling air. He found himself actually enjoying it, since the studio really did hire the best actors for the roles.

* * *

 

The fans still on his side by the time his take-down finished going viral were actually impressed with his rationality in his critique. There were less of them by the time he posted an introspective blog entry entitled,  _Are there any true fans?_  His answer was a lengthy diatribe on how it depended on how you counted it.

Lucas stayed very quiet in the fandom. He’d been deposed by the echo chamber crew, and watched with distant eyes as that particular aspect of the fandom imploded from its own toxicity. Meanwhile, people were loving the movies, live action regardless. They were finding out all the cool things that roped him into the fandom and -he had to admit- several hundred Syn’amon/Original Male Character fanfics.

When he came crawling back to Firefaire, he did so in a staid ancient Humanman outfit he’d made himself. From scratch. He’d taught himself after he realised that Makarune Ton was a very impressive seamstress. Her tutorials were right on the button, too.

That was where he met… her.

She was more or less an average nerd. Pasty, slightly doughy, and seeming unfit. She did, however, have a pretty darn accurate costume for Peppakorn, a background Elf who maybe had three total minutes of screen time in any version of  _Fires in Elfington._  He politely asked for a photo and she surprised the pants off him by popping an accurate -and uncomfortable- pose.

They talked shop about costume creation and fanfic for seeming hours. Losing track of time, space, and any other relative dimensions. For the first time in his life, he made a friend of the female persuasion.

Her name was Aurie Kenisson, and she taught yoga for a living. She’d loved the show from the instant Tatonaka-san had blogged about the possibility and she had dived straight into Elven history to find out if it was plausible.

There were a few historical figures who could have been the real-life Syn’amon, but it was more likely that this was a result of synchronicity than any actual research. Many of the records were indistinct about who did what where and when. It was Elven. All descriptors were verbs, so it was hard to translate into Common.

Lucas was impressed as hell that she’d learned Elven just to verify her research. She was dedicated. He had to admire that.

It took him quite a while to realise he had fallen in love. Ten, twenty years ago? He’d have dismissed her, ignored her, and gone drooling over a body pillow artwork with impossible anatomy.

Things change. People change.

Lucas was glad that he was changing, too.


	37. Chapter 37

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous said:  
> For your TAZ things can we get more baby Lucretia? She’s so cute

Lucretia Clark wouldn’t talk. Sno could understand why. She had spent so long avoiding questions by being silent that it became her way of being. The problem was, she was age three, going on four, and language skills were a concern. In brief, it was get her to talk, or have Child Services make her talk.

That was not a thing she wanted happening to a small and already traumatised child. Therefore, she was using everything she could find to try and help Lucretia talk.

This was one such desperate measure. Lucretia liked watching Fascinating Planet and the host of the show was exhibiting some of the more socialised exotic animals to adults and kids for an entrance fee. Every child would be allowed to touch and handle these animals, and the host would talk. It was an intense experience.

Lucretia recognised the host in an instant and pointed. “Davenport,” she said.

It was the most syllables she’d said at one time. “Yes,” said Sno. “That’s Mr Dru Davenport. He hosts Fascinating Planet. We watch him every other Saturn-day.”

Lucretia, amazingly, started humming the theme tune. She was coming out of her shell already. It was a treat to see her happy.

The worrying part was that all the other kids coming to this thing were twelve and up. Some were almost adults. Lucretia noticed too, and clung tighter to Sno’s hand.

“You want an up-hug?” Sno offered.

Nod. Lucretia had gone quiet again.

Sno lifted her up and wrapped her in her arms, purring softly and soothingly. “It’s going to be okay,” she said. “I arranged things with the organisers. They know about us. They know about you. There’s no need to worry... You’ll see.”

Lucretia had her communications cards, and found the one that said, Rejection.

“They won’t throw us out. You’ll see.”

The queue let them shuffle forward and there, standing on the ticket desk, was the man himself.

“Davenport,” Lucretia whispered.

The world-famous Gnome had a rainbow parrot on a leash, which seemed interested in either climbing on top of Davenport’s head, or sidling along an arm. The bird had apparently learned a few choice phrases, one of which was, “Potty poo!” That one amused all the kids. Even Lucretia had a smile.

Davenport noticed them, and gestured to some of the staff. There was a Tiefling who gave them VIP lanyards and instructions to wait after the show. This was news to Sno.

“Pretty bird,” said Lucretia.

Davenport introduced the bird as Vina, and told all about how she was bred in captivity to help save her entire species. As well as, “Potty poo!” Vina could say, “Awesome,” and, “Wanna seed.” She was still a baby. Others of her kind could carry on prompted conversations.

Vina’s best trick was staying still and letting so many kids - including Lucretia - touch her vibrant feathers.

The show itself was amazing. Groups of twenty learned about animals they hadn’t known existed before, either from Davenport or some of the creatures’ handlers. They even had a swamp dragon named Errol who could follow a few commands for a nugget of sulphur.

Lucretia did not want to touch the little python, no matter how safe everyone said it was. She shrank away from it when Sno had it in her hands, so she handed it back and let the other kids have a go. The followup, including more hugs and purring, was a small monkey in a diaper who liked to braid long hair.

That one was a crowd favourite, and Davenport continued his lecture with a monkey giving him a plait.

It seemed like mere minutes, but the show was over and Sno waited with Lucretia for the others to file out.

Davenport was left alone with them. No animals to talk about. No rehearsed tricks to prompt. He sat where Lucretia could see him and said, “Hi, Lu-lu-lucretia. I know it’s a li-little strange to to to to hear me talk like this but... well... I used to ha-have trouble ta-talking too, I still do, some-sometimes.”

Lucretia voluntarily left Sno’s arms, and put her hand in Davenport’s outstretched one. “I don’t like to talk,” she said, barely above a whisper. “People wanna know everything. When I don’t talk, they stop asking.”

Sno knew better than to jump around cheering, despite the breakthrough moment. This was absolute proof that Lucretia’s language centers were just fine, thank you. As it was, she held as still as a stone and barely breathed.

“When I g-got your letter, I did some homework,” said Davenport. “It was-wasn’t ni-ni-nice, what happened. I can un-understand why you were sca-sca-scared of- of- of answering questions. You- you- you know the- the dangerous part is over, bu-but you just can’t... you can’t let g-go of the ha-ha-habit.”

She nodded.

“I have a sta-stammer. It kept me quiet for- for a long time,” he breathed a laugh. “They-they-they used to call me the-the Wordless One in school. And one day... Some-something incredible ha-happened.”

Lucretia was entranced. “What happened?”

“A re-representative from- from the local zoo came by with a- with a Pangolin. They- they were there to- to- to teach the kids about pres-preservation efforts and why zoos were- were important. They didn’t get to- to talk that day. They just asked one- one question. ‘Does anyone know what this is’.“

“You knew,” said Lucretia, eyes twinkling.

“I infodumped. The-the amazing thing? When I’m ta-talking about animals, I don’t- I don’t stammer. It’s like... I’m home. Safer than home. When I- when I have an animal nearby I-- It’s like someone hit a swi-switch.”

Lucretia nodded. She could see the difference in Davenport with animals and Davenport without. “I don’t have a switch.”

“Lots of people do-don’t,” he agreed. “Lots of people ha-have to- have to find the-their own way. There- there’s no map, there’s no guy-guide, no- no- no compass. You, Mi-miss Lucretia... are your- your- your own trailblazer. I be- believe you can find a way out of- out of your habit.”

Lucretia said, “I’ll try,” and, “Thank you, sir.”

Two weeks later, and her school was complaining that she wouldn’t stop talking.


	38. Chapter 38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> Can we see Merle partying with Ming and Ransie?

The thing about being a Dwarf with 1999 party points is that one quickly becomes The Guy for party consultations. However, if invited himself, the party quickly goes to Off The Hook without warning. For everyone’s safety, it was better that he helped plan the parties, or procure the party supplies, but never actually attend a party.

The Neverwinter PD let him hold an epic rager every New Years’, SWAT on hand to hose everyone down if things got too heavy, but even that could begin to pall after a while. Every now and again, Merle wanted to be  _in_  the party, not just helping to create it.

Which was why he was glad he knew La’ming Ton. As The Guy for party shit, he knew where to get hold of a giant fake cake and a lady willing to jump out of it at the drop of a hat. If it wasn’t La’ming, it was one of her coworkers in the Neverwinter Blue Movie scene. Those kids knew how to party. But it wasn’t just that that warmed his cold and shrivelled heart.

It was the fact that Ransei Somner, one of the aforementioned coworkers, was reaching a milestone and wanted a party. She and La’ming wanted Merle  _at_  the party.

“The whole studio’s going to be there,” said Ransei. “So we want something a little bit over the top.”

“You want  _me_  to jump out of a cake?” Merle joked. “You gotta admit, it has novelty value, there.”

The girls laughed. “Yeah, nah. Nobody jumping out of a cake. We’d rather eat one, y’know.”

“None of the  _hard_  drugs,” said La’ming. “I have a P&T the next evening.”

“Oof. Okay. Shit that’ll have you back to normal by noon at the latest. No lingering tells by three PM? Yeah, I know some stuff. Help us all get the party on without being too down the next day.”

“Of course it wouldn’t be a party without you there, Merle,” said Ransei. “You’re practically one of the family.”

“You got all the permits lined up?”

“Fire brigade, ambulance, riot control, and police,” said La’ming. “Of course I told my daughter you were bummed out and she helped with all the red tape. And I mean  _all_  the red tape.”

“You’re like a class five hazard or something, dude.”

“Eh, it’s a curse.” Merle shrugged. “You’re really doing this? For me?”

“Of course. We love you.”

* * *

 

It made the news, of course it did. News like a porn star rager, held in a building slated for demolition, and having  _that_  Merle Highchurch as a guest, gets around. There were definitely a few people there who came just to say they had been there, that they were in the room where it happened.

Things went off the hook when some asshole put on  _Cuban Pete_  and Merle lost all of his sense of restrained. The party, he always insisted, had to come out somewhere. This... just accelerated the process.

A hundred partiers were swept up in his aura. A hundred more caught it like a virus. After that, things were a little blurry and someone woke up naked in the park with a duck in one arm and a traffic cone in the other.

All things considered, they were lucky to get out of it with no property damage.

La’ming Ton only regretted the killer headache the next day, and the fact that she had to turn up to the P&T with a giant ice pack on hand.

If there was one bright point to the day after the night before, it was that Lulu and Koko’s teachers  _also_  had comically large ice packs on hand and a wary way of watching her and wondering if she knew what they did last night.


	39. Chapter 39

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MayaKnightStar on Chapter 37 of Tumbl'd3: Forever TAZ: 
> 
> So Merle and Ming are a couple? That’s cute. Merle doesn’t get enough love. Can we see them on a date?

"I don't get it," said Merle. "People ship us. Why?"

"We get along so well, they think we could be in love." La'ming Ton shrugged. "So if you weren't into this 'date'," she used air quotes, "why'd you agree to come?"

"Our shippers are paying for it all. How about you?"

She blushed a little, "Same, actually. The jobs and the youtube videos pay for a lot of stuff, but... only if I stay at home and never go anywhere and barely enjoy myself, you know? It's nice to get away and go somewhere fancy and enjoy something."

He cackled and nodded. "Yeah, I get that. When my kids were little niblets, the money went nowhere and neither do we. Income and inlaws. All the fights are about that. "

"You can't pick family," sighed La'ming, thinking of a few choice examples.

"Horseshit. You picked those kids right outta the dumpster and made 'em yours."

"They needed someone and I volunteered. It's different."

Merle gnawed on a breadstick. "So... who's making sure they don't burn the place down while you're gone?"

"Lulu isn't _that_ incendiary," La'ming made mock of punching him. "Our downstairs neighbour's having a sleepover with the twins. She's trying to get them into fashion creation, they're trying to get her into gourmet meal creation. It's a match made in hobby hell."

"What's her name, then?"

"Mak'arune." Whoops. She hadn't meant to sound that rhapsodic. She was just a neighbour. There wouldn't ever be anything special between them. She had, after all, met the kids and half the usual cast of the Neverwinter Blue Movie scene. This included Merle, go-to Background Dwarf.

"Oh, ho," he said in that knowing way. "Kind'a neighbour you maybe wanna go out and do things with?"

"We have movie nights and game nights," said La'ming. "It's... It's nice to have nights in."

Now the knowing grin widened. Their first course arrived, which both parties peppered with thanks. They had to wait until the waiters were gone. "Comfy nights in, snuggling on the couch, is it?"

"Family purr pile. Mak'arune and I kind'a kibbitz the movies a little bit. Not enough to annoy the babies."

"And sometimes, you braid each other's hair..."

La'ming, veteran of one unplanned pregnancy, current mother of two, and co-star of several Blue moves, blushed intensely. "We're not into each other like that..."

"Yet," said Merle. "I can see it in your eyes. You like her."

"Yeah, but... we're neighbours. She's... kind'a sheltered and innocent. I can't... I'd fuck up her life."

Merle just weighed her up with his eyes. "And?"

"And she's got her life sorted out and she doesn't need my level of disaster up in there."

"Sounds like you like her a lot."

The first course done, the second arrived. Small little servings, it was almost a shame to wreck the artistry of it. "She's amazing. Like. Mak'arune's a half Elf, and she dealt with the junk from both sides, and she's still cheerful and optimistic and determined to make the world prettier. She has this cute little dimple when she smiles and her eyes... gods, her eyes. I could fall into those eyes. But... she's better off finding someone better than me."

"Hmmm," said Merle. "You sure about that?"

A deep breath. "Yeah."

"These movie nights... you invite her?"

"No... she asks about them. Of course I have to tell her the truth, she's so trusting. I couldn't wreck that. It'd be... sinful, I guess."

"The game nights?"

"She invites us."

This earned another 'Hmmm' from Merle. "Sounds to me like she might like you. Maybe she doesn't want to say anything 'cause it might ruin what'cha got."

"Nothing could ruin that," said La'ming, just a little too quickly. Her brain caught up with her mouth. "See? That's why you're our dad and not our DILF."

"That, and the sciatica," said Merle. "How many of these petite servings are we supposed to be getting?"

La'ming said, "They can keep 'em coming until they throw us out. This stuff is impressive, and I've been letting the twins feed me."

"Fair enough. Just make sure to smooch your -ah- BFF from the flat downstairs. As a 'thank you'."


	40. Chapter 40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dualityandsuch said:  
> Found this while looking through old Convos: Later Mags proposes he and Mukaara form the secret society so they can be in on all the secrets. You gotta make it happen.

Magnus was old enough to go out on his own, having absorbed the road rules and following them implicitly, all the way to his destination. Usually, his dads let him go to the Bodega, or to the school, but this was a special occasion.

He was walking two blocks to where Mr Mukaara lived. The whole mess with processed sugar in mind, Magnus had come up with a plan. He’d written it down and everything.

He found the apartment block, and found the buzzer to ring. Then it was a wait on tenterhooks to see if Mr Mukaara was going to let him in. The front door unlocked, and Magnus zoomed up the stairs to Mr Mukaara’s flat.

The Dark Elf greeted him with, “Hey, squirt. You all good?”

“My dads said I don’t haveta keep apologising for the thing, but I am sorry and I thought of a way to fix it.” He waved the notebook. “We make the secret society.”

“Okay, what’s so cool about a secret society?”

“Not  _a_  secret society,  _the_  secret society. We share all the secrets so nobody makes any mistakes ever again.” Magnus flipped some pages, proudly displaying a reasonable copy of the ‘no young Elves’ warning label and Magnus’ writing nearby,  _Shuger makes Elf branes go funy._

“And I help with the spelling?” Mukaara suggested.

“You help with the secrets,” Magnus insisted. “Like... everyone says that young Elves shouldn’t have sugar, but they never say  _why._  That’s how mistakes happen.”

“Oh. So it’s things everyone knows but nobody talks about,” Mukaara was getting it. He gestured the boy in. “Or things everyone  _thinks_  everyone knows, but mistakes happen because they  _don’t_  know.”

“Exactly,” Magnus made himself comfortable at Mukaara’s table, and showed another page. This one had a drawing of a burger with yellow dots and a picture of Mr Angus McDonald throwing up. The writing said,  _The McDonald famly is alerjick to sesame ~~str~~  seeds._ “I don’t want any mistakes hurting anyone ever again, so I figured, we get the secrets and make sure everyone knows about them.”

“Everyone important,” said Mukaara. “We probably shouldn’t tell the  _whole_  world? The McDonalds do some work that makes them enemies. We don’t want enemies knowing this stuff.”

“That’s an important secret,” said Magnus. “It’s gotta go in the book.”

Mukara found a blank page. “You draw, I’ll write.”

“Deal.”

There’s more than one way to protect the people you love. Making certain they’re all safe has many, many facets.


End file.
